Olavo de Carvalho
Época, September 29, 2001
They help you understand nothing about the terrorist attacks
Two weeks after the attacks, all the most obvious and predictable mistakes of analysis, which would be a shame for someone of average intelligence, have occurred, with the easiness of the unconscious, by the wise men in charge, who give their opinion about the matter. We’ll consider three, and their respective authors.
First: consider the crime a legitimate reaction against the “aggressive militarism of the U.S.” Authors: practically all leftist intelligentsia in the Third World.
For the past century and during two world wars and various local conflicts, the total number of victims of U.S. military actions has been 1.6 million people – a third of what Communist China killed in its own land in only half that time. In World War II, the U.S. killed 925,000 people on all fronts, only half of what the Communists killed in Cambodia alone, less than they killed in Tibet or — guess where else — Afghanistan. In Vietnam, victims of the U.S. numbered 213,000 from 1960 to 1972. In Rwanda in 1994, crowds driven by leftist agitators killed four times that number in only 10 weeks.
In this context, when a leftist describes the U.S. as an aggressive and military state, he is simply not being honest.
Second: explain the attacks as acts of “fanaticism,” “war,” or “backwardness” of the Islamic religion. Authors: pro-Western Christian, atheist, or Jewish intellectuals – who are proud of what they see as superiority of their respective countries, cultures, and religions.
There is no single bellicose commandment in the Koran that is not also present in the Old Testament. At least until the 20th Century, Muslim invaders have always been more tolerant of religions in defeated lands than Christians in India or in Africa, or than Israelis with the Cananeus and Amorreus.
The eminent Paul Johnson, in condemning the Muslims as having no history of modernization as the West has had since the 16th Century, totally misses the mark because these modernizing trends gave way to colonial absolutism and later to totalitarian ideologies which gave birth to the age of terrorism and genocide, two plagues which only later and through those ideologies came to infect the Islamic population.
This error is possibly the worst because it urges a general conflict between Islam and the West, playing into the hands of anti-capitalist forces – and Islamic forces, only in name – which subsidize and manipulate Muslim extremists.
Third: morally condemn the American reaction, using the excuse of “forgiveness.” Authors: Pharisees, goody-goodies, terrorists dressed with cassok.
No religion in the world gives anyone the right to “forgive” the offenses of third-parties, against the will of victims or their descendants. The forgiveness this people are talking about is the easy forgiveness of someone who has never suffered and has only to gain with somebody else’s suffering.
Making anti-American proselytism over a total contempt for the voice of the victims is an unqualified low blow. For this reason, the ecumenical cult “in favor of peace” gathered in Sao Paulo on the 23rd was a satanic parody of the simultaneous celebration in Yankee Stadium. In the latter, followers of all religions – including Islam – gathered together in an act of gratitude and faithfulness, offering their lives in defense of the country that has given them freedom. In the other, what we saw was the word “forgiveness” blossomed into obscene disregard from the mouths of individuals who, beneath their affectation of good sentiments, still fume hate at the memory of the defeat suffered by their terrorist friends, 30 years ago, during military dictatorship. Any man who cannot forgive the death of armed revolutionaries, but cynically wants the unarmed victims to fraternize the murderers of their fathers, mothers and brothers, is not and can never be a man of God.
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