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Page 3
The original thesis, in the first American letter, was that the war against terrorism is a just war. Although they are not explicit, the European respondents do not reject this argument and embrace a principled pacifism. The European letter, originally published in Frankfurter Allgermeine, acknowledges "the United States made an outstanding contribution to the liberation of Europe from the yoke of Nazism." Hence, they unambiguously acknowledge that a just war is, in principle, possible. However, rather than directly addressing the issue as to whether the war against terrorism is just, they descend into historical revisionism. For example, rather than acknowledging the joint and remarkably peaceful victory of the West in the Cold War against a totalitarian power that divided Berlin with a wall, they suggest that "as a leading superpower during the period of East-West confrontation, [the US] was also largely responsible for grave abuses in the world."
If we are to engage in a meaningful dialogue, European intellectuals ought not be so ethically obtuse as to argue that mass murder by the attackers of September 11, does not justify "mass murder of the Afghan population." Are these intellectuals really incapable or just unwilling to recognize the evident moral distinction between attacks deliberately intended to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible and incidental and unintended civilian deaths in a war? If they wish to make the charge of "murder" ought not they at least produce some evidence of a deliberate intention to kill innocent civilians? The canard of 4,000 innocent Afghan civilian deaths is even trotted out. This figure is based on third party reports and has largely been discredited. The Associated Press puts the number of civilian casualties in the hundreds and MSNBC reports "Afghan journalists for the official Bakhtar news agency, whose reports were used as a basis for Taliban claims, now say their dispatches were freely doctored." Yet the number 4,000 is lent credence by unquestioning repetition because it is rhetorically convenient to suggest that as many civilian as were killed by Americans as by the terrorists. It feeds into to fallacy of moral equivalency. The European signatories agree that the threat is misguided fundamentalism, but apparently not Islamic fundamentalism. No, they fear the "fundamentalism" of American religiosity and patriotism. "Many of us feel that the growing influence of fundamentalist forces in the United States on the political elite of your country, which clearly extends all the way to the White House, is cause for concern." Islamic fundamentalists rejoice at the death caused by slamming commercial airliners into buildings, while some European elites fret that Americans have a president that takes his faith seriously. It is clear that most Europeans are not anti-American like the intellectuals who signed the recent letter. Indeed, these intellectuals remain concerned that "the political class in Europe" is engaged in "obsequious submission to the superior and sole superpower..." One would hope that the European intellectuals are as out-of-touch with the average European as their American counterparts are with average Americans. Once again Americans and, we hope, some Europeans will have to fight for the right for intellectuals to freely and ungratefully engage in moral posturing and deliberate distortion. You're welcome.
The copyright of the article In Defense of the War on Terrorism - Page 3 in Conservative Politics is owned by Frank Monaldo. Permission to republish In Defense of the War on Terrorism - Page 3 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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