The Council Has Spoken:

This week, most of the nominated posts, not surprisingly, were related to the 5th Anniversary of 9/11.  The winning Council post was by Matt Barr, at Socratic Rhythm Method.  In Your chance of dying in a terrorist attack, he pointed out, for the slow learners, that you can feel passionately about the current travails without necessarily feeling personally threatened by terrorism.  There was a second place tie between Soccer Dad, who highlighted the Three strands not easily broken that led to 9/11, and my post on 9/11 Ambiguities.

Among non-Council Posts, Cassandra's And At Night, I Dream Of You... won with her moving tribute to a wonderful person lost on 9/11.  There was a four way tie for second place:

Ten Reasons Why the West Will Lose the War on Terror (the pessimist’s view)

Countdown To 9/11: My Days With The Dead

The Shadow of Our Hand

A General Theory of Just About Everything

As always, all the nominees can be found at the Watcher of Weasels and all will reward your time and effort.

Comments

[Charles Stewart]

Reference the 10 reasons,
The "10 reasons" post acknowledges an article by Davis Selbourne in the Times. His article is titled 10 reasons why the west will lose the battle with Islam.
Certainly that confusion, also evident in this blog, is one reason why the "war on terror" is in trouble.

Both these lists fail to ask the most obvious question. There was prior to and during the invasion of Afghanistan an international consensus in support of WoT. What happened to that consensus?
It was shattered, not by any of the "10 reasons" but by the still unexplained and reckless decision to invade Iraq.
But what probably did more damage was the deliberate campaign of disinformation which preceeded the invasion. I mentioned in an earlier post that people do not like to be lied to, and once they realize they have been, they get angry, especially when the results of the lie are so ugly.

As far as the "moral" arguement goes, in a way I agree, but I have, as you might expect a totally different take on it. I think that the west, in broad terms, has strong and worthwhile moral principles. Principles that are worth defending and spreading. These include respect for human rights and dignity, freedom of expression and infromation, respect for legality and international law, belief in democracy, belief in justice, tolerance and humanity .... just a partial list, and the emphasis and degree of respect for the various points will vary from country to country and person to person.
So it is not so much that the west does not have worthwhile values, it is that the leadership of the WoT has seen fit to ignore those values in its conduct of the war. Apart from the obvious transgressions there has been an almost complete disregard for the innocent (civilian) casualties of the war. (I tried, and did not succeed, in finding a reliable count of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, it appears that they were not even considered important enough to count.) So if there is a moral failure, it is not in the "west" but in the leadership of the WoT itself.

Peace, Chas