"Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's resistance movements - or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognised government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world.
Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York and Washington.
People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed.
Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments.
Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond - they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts."
Arundhati Roy, in
The Guardian. This is quite a distressing piece, because you can kind of sense the anger, the frustration, the confusion that the author seems to be feeling - and I know what she means. I find myself wondering if there's something wrong with me, and my friends and other people I know who feel the same way, if maybe we're just too sensitive, too "emotional" as Clare Short called the anti-war movement... because I don't "get it", because I don't see what the fucking point is of dropping bombs on hospitals in Afghanistan.