"Within days of 9/11 Susan Sontag gave the world some famous advice. "Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together." Fearing a stupendously stupid response by Washington and Canberra, I began my next column with Sontag's quote, which provoked for me, as for her, the most enraged reaction in a long career.
Copping accusations of racism (I was deemed to be an anti-American bigot as well as a traitor) my column also responded to Christopher Hitchens' introduction of the term "Islamic fascism" into an already white-hot debate.
Islamic fascism reminded me that the US had never stopped "playing footsie with governments that slaughtered, disappeared, tortured and abused their hapless populations" - that the US "has for decades provided terrorist regimes with weapons, training and financial support" and that "among the recipients, Saddam Hussein, Washington's favourite dictator when it was confronting Iranians. And, yes, the Mujaheddin, predecessors of the Taliban, whom Washington saw as a kris pointed at the heart of the Soviet Union".
So begins a recent column of Phillip Adams in The Australian. It's a perceptive piece which pays reading It puts things neatly into context - something sadly lacking wherever one turns.
Copping accusations of racism (I was deemed to be an anti-American bigot as well as a traitor) my column also responded to Christopher Hitchens' introduction of the term "Islamic fascism" into an already white-hot debate.
Islamic fascism reminded me that the US had never stopped "playing footsie with governments that slaughtered, disappeared, tortured and abused their hapless populations" - that the US "has for decades provided terrorist regimes with weapons, training and financial support" and that "among the recipients, Saddam Hussein, Washington's favourite dictator when it was confronting Iranians. And, yes, the Mujaheddin, predecessors of the Taliban, whom Washington saw as a kris pointed at the heart of the Soviet Union".
So begins a recent column of Phillip Adams in The Australian. It's a perceptive piece which pays reading It puts things neatly into context - something sadly lacking wherever one turns.
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