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Sept 11 wasn't so bad says Nobel

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airborne

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http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8...;show_article=1

Lessing Says Sept. 11 Attacks Not So Bad

Oct 22 03:07 PM US/Eastern

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Nobel laureate Doris Lessing said the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States were "not that terrible" when compared to attacks by the IRA in Britain.

"September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible," the Nobel Literature Prize winner told the leading Spanish daily El Pais.

"Some Americans will think I'm crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think. They're a very naive people, or they pretend to be," she said in an interview published Sunday.

"Do you know what people forget? That the IRA attacked with bombs against our government; it killed several people while a Conservative congress was being held and in which the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was (attending). People forget," she said.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. About 3,700 died and tens of thousands of people were maimed in more than 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army guerrilla group, which caused most of the deaths, disarmed in 2005.

Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Lessing in London for comment Monday were unsuccessful. Her agent's office said the author was unavailable because she was not feeling well.

In the El Pais interview, Lessing had sharp words for both President Bush and his ally, former British premier Tony Blair.

"I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning," El Pais quoted Lessing as saying. "Many of us hated Tony Blair, I think he has been a disaster for Britain and we have suffered him for many years. I said it when he was elected: This man is a little showman who is going to cause us problems and he did."

"As for Bush, he's a world calamity," added Lessing. "Everyone is tired of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever, although you have to remember he is a member of a social class which has profited from wars."

Iran also came in for a lashing from Lessing, who was born to British parents who were living in what is now Bakhtaran, Iran.

"I hate Iran, I hate the Iranian government, it's a cruel and evil government," she was quoted as saying.

"Look what happened to its president in New York, they called him evil and cruel in Colombia University. Marvelous! They should have said more to him! Nobody criticizes him, because of oil."

The author of dozens of works from short stories to science fiction, including the classic "The Golden Notebook," Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature earlier this month. She was praised by the judges for her "skepticism, fire and visionary power."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Something about this is just wrong. What exactly is this author trying to do by saying that Sept 11 was less "terrible". What could her motivation possibly be? What is this - some kind of Toohey trick whereby you compare one event with another?

Edited by airborne
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Something about this is just wrong. What exactly is this author trying to do by saying that Sept 11 was less "terrible". What could her motivation possibly be? What is this - some kind of Toohey trick whereby you compare one event with another?

The body count matters less than the context or circumstance. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor killed fewer people than did the 9/11 attack on the WTC. Never the less, our response to the Pearl Harbor attack was to burn Japan to the ground. It took four years, but that is exactly what we did.

Perhaps Lessing was being disingenuous, perhaps she was just being stupid. I don't know.

Bob Kolker

Edited by Robert J. Kolker
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The body count matters less than the context or circumstance.

I've noted many on the left count only the bodies, and some count the economic costs. Back when we started bombing Afghanistan there were a few stoies, not many and not very prominent, tallying how many casualties we had inflicted vs how many had died on 9/11. Note also the left's obsession with US casualty numbers in Iraq.

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OK, maybe I'm heartless, but I don't count bodies, but FREE bodies. every free body that dies is a great loss while bodies of opressed people who had no life to begin with, I don't count as "horrible" so, yeah, in my opinion, 9/11 was more horrible because free, innocent hard-working, successful, people with a REAL life died that day. real lives ended. not just existing creatures.

Edited by Marty McFly
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9/11 was a bad blow against freedom. We all have to agree about that. However, it depends on whom we wish to free from. Personally, I'm always more frightened of my own government than any foreigner. It's the excessive use of domestic power that the Founding Fathers tried to protect us against. It would seem to me that the cumulative effect of the US and UK governments over the last 100 years has left us all with little basic freedoms.

Ayn Rand would be disgusted by the way that American "Sense of Life" has failed to act as a functioning philosophy to protect our freedoms. 9/11 should have been outrage not an opportunity to reduce our freedom of movement.

Netafja

OK, maybe I'm heartless, but I don't count bodies, but FREE bodies. every free body that dies is a great loss while bodies of opressed people who had no life to begin with, I don't count as "horrible" so, yeah, in my opinion, 9/11 was more horrible because free, innocent hard-working, successful, people with a REAL life died that day. real lives ended. not just existing creatures.
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OK, maybe I'm heartless, but I don't count bodies, but FREE bodies. every free body that dies is a great loss while bodies of opressed people who had no life to begin with, I don't count as "horrible" so, yeah, in my opinion, 9/11 was more horrible because free, innocent hard-working, successful, people with a REAL life died that day. real lives ended. not just existing creatures.

I think that is a bit harsh. What makes tyranny so evil is its oppressive nature. The tyrant probably doesnt view the mountain of corpses of those he has oppressed as particularly "horrible" either. By essentially agreeing with the tyrant in minimizing the value of the lives of those whom he has oppressed, are you not in effect sactioning his brutality?

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I think that is a bit harsh. What makes tyranny so evil is its oppressive nature. The tyrant probably doesnt view the mountain of corpses of those he has oppressed as particularly "horrible" either. By essentially agreeing with the tyrant in minimizing the value of the lives of those whom he has oppressed, are you not in effect sactioning his brutality?

If i lived under stallin, I'd have gladly preferred death, and wouldn't think I was missing anything if I was murdered.

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