ON TERRORISM, CENSORSHIP, AND TARGETING CIVILIANS

Gerard MacMullin chastised Gwynne Dyer for his "blame the victim"
mentality, but isn't this the mentality that Bush and Blair use to
justify bombing raids, missile attacks, and mass murder: that the
victims brought it upon themselves by failing to be adequately
cooperative? MacMullin's assertion that "Britain, the U.S., and Israel
do not deliberately target civilians" is false. The U.S. is well known
for the most egregious deliberate assault on civilians in human
history, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to
mention the firebombing of Dresden, the mass slaughter of Native
American civilians, the burning of thousands of Vietnamese civilians
with napalm and the massive incidence of birth defects caused by Agent
Orange, and the attacks with heavily armed gestapo units on legal
medical-marijuana farmers in California. As British journalist John
Pilger pointed out, "Only by recognizing the terrorism of states is it
possible to understand, and deal with, acts of terrorism by groups and
individuals which, however horrific, are tiny by comparison." Someone
once described the U.S. as "this vast mad horror that doesn't know its
size, or its strength, or its weakness, or its barbaric speed,
stupidity, din, self-righteousness, this cancerous Babylon." Was it a
crazed, freedom-hating Muslim terrorist? Well, no.

It was the poet Dylan Thomas. Utah Phillips says that the long memory
is the most radical idea in America. I hope that isn't also the case
in Canada.

George Kosinski

Gibsons