IHT - Letters to the Editor
Moral clarity on terrorism
Regarding ‘‘Make terrorism a universal taboo’’
(Views, Dec. 28) by Nicholas D.Kristof
iht.com
Moral clarity ought not to be confused with moral simplicity. True moral clarity often requires the acknowledgement of moral complexity. The simplistic, agenda-serving rhetoric of the Bush administration falls far short of this.
As Kristof so aptly points out, terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. Militants in Chechnya, Palestine and many other places in the world believe that they, too, are responding to terrorist attacks on their peoples although the ‘‘terrorists’’ are governments. Kristof writes, ‘‘Ideally, any private group should know that if it kills civilians, it will become a pariah and discredit its own cause.’’ There is no need to limit this statement to private groups. Any government that kills civilians, tortures prisoners or colludes with regimes that do so should know the same. In the name of a ‘‘war on terror’’ and justifying it with ‘‘moral clarity,’’ the Bush administration is leading America deeper and deeper into a moral quagmire of violence and repression that is making America the ‘‘pariah’’ that ‘‘discredits its own cause.’’ Jess Curtis, Berlin Kristof, endorsing President George W. Bush’s ‘‘campaign for moral clarity,’’ writes that any private group should know that if it kills civilians, it will discredit its own cause.
Jess Curtis, Berlin
This autumn impoverished Palestinian peasants, attempting to harvest their own olives on their own land, were murdered and terrorized by fanatical Israeli settlers who want the land for themselves. This was only possible because of a heavily armed occupation force — wearing official government uniforms and receiving massive aid from Mr. Moral Clarity himself. In the conflict provoked by this illegal occupation, almost 100 Israeli children have been murdered by Palestinian fanatics — and some 300 Palestinian children by the Israeli army. As long as the United States gives aid to armies committing war crimes, as long as it turns a blind eye to some of the worst violence now being endured by civilians, the ‘‘war on terrorism’’ will remain an obscene exercise in hypocrisy, fueling the very violence it is supposed to contain.
E. Harrison Gould, Baillargues, France
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