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Rowan Williams: Terrorists can have serious moral goals
Some people actually think that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a serious thinker and theologian:
Rowan was much funnier when he was teamed with Martin on Laugh-InThe Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, yesterday urged America to recognise that terrorists can "have serious moral goals". He said that while terrorism must always be condemned, it was wrong to assume its perpetrators were devoid of political rationality. "It is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue an aim that is shared by those who would not dream of acting in the same way, an aim that is intelligible or desirable." He said that in ignoring this, in its criticism of al-Qa’eda, America "loses the power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a self-referential morality."
Translation: the United States shouldn’t fight against Al-Qaeda. It should realized that while terrorism, "must always be condemned," nevertheless Al-Qaeda and other groups like them can "have serious moral goals" as well as "an aim that is intelligible or desirable." If the US doesn’t do that it "loses the power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a self-referential morality" which presumably means that Americans will be "trapped" by the idea that killing innocent American men, women and children is a bad thing. Then there’s this:
I'm really tired of the self-criticism thing. I'm ready to see piles of beturbanned corpses, and it won't bother me if they're hideously mutilated.
Dr Williams said that no government should act as its own judge on whether to launch military action against a rogue state. "Violence is not to be undertaken by private persons," he said. "If a state or administration acts without due and visible attention to agreed international process, it acts in a way analogous to a private person. It purports to be judge of its own interest."
Translation: on September 12, 2001, George W. Bush should have called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council and asked that body what it would permit the United States to do about the murder of 3,000 of its citizens. Which presumably means that we’d still be waiting for the sanctions on Afghanistan to take effect.
The USA, last I looked, was a sovreign state, not a "private person." As a sovreign state, to "provide for the common defense," it has a responsibility to judge its interests — most especially when it comes to protecting its citizens.

Posted by: Christopher Johnson 2003-10-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=19893