March 13, 2004

IT'S A FAIR COP

Who is responsible for the Madrid attacks? According to Glenn Condell, I am:

I wonder if the eager, spiteful nature of your riposte might have something to do with an awareness of your minor, but by no means negligible part in the propaganda wing of the crime that may well have caused Madrid.

Guess that screws any chance I had of getting into the University of Sydney. Meanwhile, in a truly blog-quaking development, Mark Steyn-hating Australian academic John Quiggin has reached near-identical conclusions on the nature of terrorism as his war-lusting right-wing foe. Here’s Steyn:

Does it make any difference [who committed the Madrid attacks]? No ... Every victory for an individual terrorist is also a victory for the phenomenon ... it brings together ideologically incompatible organizations all over the world: ETA, for example, are known to have traveled to Afghanistan when it served as Terrorism Central for bin Laden and others.

Likewise, if you take a "war on terror" seriously, then a vile act by one group necessarily taints another. Say I'm right, say that the 3/11 massacre was committed by Islamists. And say that six months down the ride ETA commit one of their more modestly scaled atrocities. It's no longer possible to draw a distinction, any more than it would be if the Real IRA committed some small-scale demolition of an Ulster pub. Once you join the club, your precise status within it is irrelevant: we know you for what you are. That's why one cannot distinguish between al-Qa'eda and Hamas, as so many European nuance-fetishists try to do.

And here’s Quiggin:

I don't think it's necessary to come to a conclusive finding as to who set up which bombs. All groups and individuals that embrace terrorism as a method share the guilt of, and responsibility for, these crimes. Both in practical and symbolic terms, terrorist acts by one group provide assistance and support to all those who follow in their footsteps. The observation of apparent links between groups that seemingly have nothing in common in political terms (the IRA and FARC, for example) illustrates the point.

Next: Quiggin demands the privatisation of the ABC, stocks his remote country estate with rifles, and begins a second career as a film critic. Finally, in other political-reversal news, I’m down $40 after Robert Corr made good his pledge to humiliate himself for the greater good. Vote Howard!

UPDATE. A Glenn Condell classic from 2003: “They don't hate us for who we are ... they hate us for what we do. You would too if you had the wit and imagination to place yourself in someone else's shoes.

Posted by Tim Blair at March 13, 2004 03:48 PM
Comments

Cheese it, Tim! They're ON TO YOU.

Posted by: Sortelli at March 13, 2004 at 04:04 PM

Over at the Sydney Morning Herald, the letter writers seem to think that Bush, Howard, Aznar, et al, are responsible. Two have gone so far to call it 'punishment'. More info. here...

Posted by: TimT at March 13, 2004 at 04:25 PM

Rex's philosophical musings do strike a discordant note in the immediate aftermath of such a shocking event, but they are only musings after all from someone who's mind doesn't automatically tend to the public script as yours does.

Notice how this type of tard always writes in backwards, "sophisticated" prose? I'm sure he thinks he's exquisitely eloquent, but when I read it, I'm thinking, "And your point is what? Your fucking POINT? ... What? That was IT? Tim's mind tends to the 'public script'? Dickhead."

Posted by: reg at March 13, 2004 at 04:28 PM

" I wonder if the eager, spiteful nature of your riposte might have something to do with an awareness of your minor, but by no means negligible part in the propaganda wing of the crime that may well have caused Madrid."

I read this in context and still haven't a clue exactly what he means. I think if Tim had written something that could have 'caused Madrid', one of the regular idiots that post here would have pointed it out and mentioned the inflammatory nature of the writing.

At least he's original. He could have gone down the US, Bush, and/or Israel road assigning blame. I've been waiting for the US, at least, to be blamed. Seems I'm not to be disappointed (see previous poster on letters to the SMH).

Posted by: Chris Josephson at March 13, 2004 at 04:48 PM

Quiggin: Both in practical and symbolic terms, terrorist acts by one group provide assistance and support to all those who follow in their footsteps.

Good grief, these leftists may actually figure out some of the rationale of the war against terrorists & proliferators!!

No, wait, stop, they always forget within a month or two.

Posted by: ForNow at March 13, 2004 at 05:10 PM

TimT,
I feel the same way. Isnt it amazing? The day after such a massive tradgedy as that, what does the SMH letters page have? Sympathy? Revulsion?, No, the first letter is about Howard and how it was all HIs fault.

My god, where do they find these letters? And people think the ABC is biased,the SMH is far worse. What a disgrace.

Posted by: nic at March 13, 2004 at 06:01 PM

regarding the SMH articles.

Seems to me to be pathetic for a state to surrender its position just because these organizations are able to cause these atrocities.

As terrible as these events may be - in WWII our fathers sacrificed about

17,163,883 Soldiers (allied)
and 27,325,700 civilians (total)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

so that we would not have to bend over every time someone threatened us.

It would be deeply shameful for this generation to fold in the face of these pathetic organizations and their threats.

Posted by: Johnny at March 13, 2004 at 06:17 PM

Tim, you might want to watch it. You keep this up with these guys and the world'll start to spin backwards.

Posted by: david at March 13, 2004 at 06:20 PM

Yeah guys, it is amazing, isn't it. The letters page over at the Australian - by way of contrast - has some much more balanced responses.
Steyn and Quiggin have got the right idea; it's silly to quibble over who exactly did what exactly when the crime of terrorism is so obvious and so urgent - something the letter writers at the Herald seem to forget.
Mind you, as far as practical measures go, it's quite sensible to ask who did the bombings, how they did it, etc - since that will aid in their eventual capture.

Posted by: TimT at March 13, 2004 at 07:05 PM

A few obsessed screwball letter writers.

Versus eight million - eight million! - Spanish taking to the streets?

Posted by: ilibcc at March 13, 2004 at 07:18 PM

The interesting thing about this particular response is that you can extract information for it. Just as with this particular response to the WTC attacks, it gives away more than the person in question might have intended.

So, does the people in question respond this way universally? I.e, if they believe an event to be provoked by some particular action?

I am willing to state with a high degree of confidence that is not the case. If an immigrant gets clobbered into a pulp by a neo-nazi gang, most of our clientele would hardly start loudly proclaiming that immigration policy that allowed the poor neo-nazi to be provoked into his action.

In fact, the reaction they exhibit is one that rather plainly show where their sympathies lie. They validate the enemy action, not because they see it as a force of nature, but because they agree and sympathize with it.

This of course leads to the conclusion that these people are simply on the other side, nothing more nothing less. Fucking swine.

Posted by: Döbeln at March 13, 2004 at 08:06 PM

Oops, there are a few grammatical holes in the text above. I hope Tim's sensitive readership won't be too hurt by it. I blame hangover.

Posted by: Döbeln at March 13, 2004 at 08:08 PM

Every day, with no particular disasters, 100,000 people die. So 200 is no big deal. News reports trade on it though because it's entertainment and they sell audience.

So that much of his idea is correct. What is not correct is its significance, namely that there are people who are trying to kill as many Westerners as possible, and who would be happier if they had killed even more.

In a world with modern weapons, that's a danger that must be ended. They just haven't gotten the right weapons quite yet. Nobody's trading on that story at all, it seems to me.

I don't care who has more or less empathy; probably empathy is actually a handicap because we need the help of the other side to get rid of every last terrorist. Terrorists have to have a hard time even at home.

We all know what death is. Empathy is superfluous; and actually a danger because it goes away, where the danger does not.

Posted by: Ron Hardin at March 13, 2004 at 08:31 PM

"...if [I] had the wit and imagination..."

I imagine it would be helpful if we dropped some well placed bombs on Boy Assad, the Tehran mullahcracy and the outskirts of Mecca; then, took a few of the guests at Guantanamo out and shot them.

Teddy bears, flowers and balloons? Western civilisation has been "Dianafied" I saw a sign amongst the throng in Madrid saying, "Quien? Porque?" Time to quit wondering and step up the retaliation. I want an Islamic/ETA/IRA omelette.

Posted by: Theodopoulos Pherecydes at March 13, 2004 at 09:14 PM

Don't be alarmed, Tim, everything is normal. Prof Quiggin's sympathy will turn to loathing the minute Spain starts fighting back with any degree of effectiveness. To paraphrase Hitchens on Mother Theresa, leftists are friends of suffering, not of the sufferers.

Posted by: Clem Snide at March 13, 2004 at 10:51 PM

I went over there and kicked some flabby academic ass, like it'll do any good. Fuck those idiots.

Posted by: Amos at March 13, 2004 at 11:45 PM

Actually, Glenn, they don't hate us for what we are-- they hate us for what YOU are, a decadent Westerner too spineless to even defend yourself, a rabbit waiting to be pounced upon and eaten. The ones they don't hate-- because they fear and respect them-- are the great conquerors Bush and Rumsfeld, and their allies Blair and Howard and Aznar.

Posted by: Mike G at March 13, 2004 at 11:50 PM

"I wonder if the eager, spiteful nature of your riposte might have something to do with an awareness of your minor, but by no means negligible part in the propaganda wing of the crime that may well have caused Madrid."

The crime that caused Madrid was an act of terrorism committed by a terrorist organisation. Is Glenn Condell seriously suggesting that Tim is a member of the political wing of Al Quaeda or ETA?

Posted by: wv at March 14, 2004 at 12:18 AM

Denis Boyles column in Friday's NRO: "The Pain in Spain"
http://www.nationalreview.com/europress/boyles200403120833.asp
covers the European press and this :
"Gérard Dupuy, writing in Libération, explained that the Madrid attack had moral collaboration from terrorists elsewhere, but worried that the bombings would cause even more people to flock to "antiterrorism's banner;..."

seems to jibe nicely with Clem Snide's comment: "Prof Quiggin's sympathy will turn to loathing the minute Spain starts fighting back with any degree of effectiveness. "

Posted by: Barry at March 14, 2004 at 01:27 AM

I've written it before, but it seems an excellent time to point out afresh that on Sept. 12, the letters to the SMH were full of "They deserved it." Understand, the attacks happened late at night Sydney time, about 11pm I think, and the SMH has to be put to bed in the wee hours of the morning.

In that short space of time there were people who fired up their computers and dashed off letters to the editor, barely containing their glee that tens of thousands (for so we thought in those early hours) could be dead.

It's hard to know, though, whether those letters reflected the general view of late-night missive emitters, or whether the SMH selected them for the schadenfreude which reflected their own bias.

And ilibcc, it wouldn't matter so much if that weren't nearly the only press Australia has. The SMH, the Age of Melbourne (owned by the same company), the Australian (not much better, in my estimation; their cartoonist kept drawing Howard as a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal), and the Sydney Daily Telegraph (a populist rag) were pretty much the only papers generally available when I lived there (and the Age only on Saturday).

Posted by: Angie Schultz at March 14, 2004 at 01:54 AM

How bizzare. Tim Blair deserves an award for comforting the completely mad.

Posted by: Country member at March 14, 2004 at 02:30 AM

Wait. Am I reading these people right? Are they actually suggesting that it doesn't matter which terrorist organization does the dirty, that they are all the same when they commit acts of terror? Then... gasp... that means we were right to include Iraq in the war on terror?

Posted by: Rebecca at March 14, 2004 at 03:48 AM

Ask why only to find out who.

Posted by: aaron at March 14, 2004 at 05:41 AM

It's hard to know, though, whether those letters reflected the general view of late-night missive emitters, or whether the SMH selected them for the schadenfreude which reflected their own bias.

Its the editors selection. I've been trying to get letters published by the SMH for years, since 2000. The Telegraph and Australian have published a couple of mine, but the Fairfax press - nada.

Posted by: Quentin George at March 14, 2004 at 08:03 AM

Angie - see Tim Blair on just this subject at Fox News. I originally read this piece - 'The Land of the Deaf' - in September 11 and the Agony of the Left, and for me it was one of my stand-out reading experiences of the year.

Posted by: TimT at March 14, 2004 at 09:40 AM

TimT, I have that book, bought it before I left Oz. The best part was when Tim makes up occupations for the letter writers:

...Paul Collins, intellectual, of Pennant Hills...

...Darrell Greer, muppet, of Newtown...

...David Lyons, plonker, of Hallidays Point...

Not exactly closely-reasoned logic, but funny and cathartic. Unfortunately, by the time the book was published, I was past the dire need for funny catharsis.

Posted by: Angie Schultz at March 14, 2004 at 10:29 AM


It's been over ten years, and I'm still waiting to hear from an empathetic leftist who has the wit and imagination to put himself in Tim McVeigh's shoes and ask what injustice drove him to his desperate act.

White guys blow up buildings/kill abortion doctors/set off bombs at Olympics = evil right-wing nuts.

Brown guys blow up buildings/decapitate journalists/shoot schoolgirls = poor, disenfranchised people driven to desperate acts.

Can't wait 'til Al-Qaeda blows up the San Francisco City Hall, or the next NOW convention. The lefties' heads will go full-Cronenberg from the cognitive dissonance.

Posted by: Dave S. at March 14, 2004 at 03:47 PM

Ugh, I can't believe I tried to read more Glenn Condell. What a headache. Most I got out of it was "Oh, I hate the terrorists too but I see that the only affect I can have on anything is to vote against the guys who screw everything up by trying to fight the terrorists"

Posted by: Sortelli at March 14, 2004 at 04:51 PM