On 10/9/07, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
One outside the US (and a few inside it...) might reply that the US has been illegally holding terror suspects without trial and torturing some of them, intercepting telecommunications widely both internationally and domestically, and waging illegal war in Iraq.
We're talking about Egypt, not the United States. Your assertion that few people in the U.S. are critical of U.S. policy is specious at best.
There were only two other countries where locations were being considered. The US was one of them. It's completely relevant.
Gay and lesbian tourists from the US go to Egypt all the time without being oppressed; I'm sure some of them are offended by the local treatment of their peers, but they vacation in good health and safety.
Westerners visiting Egypt are not, as a rule, bothered by the local political issues. Most of the factions in those agree that bothering western tourists is a bad idea, and though there was a spate of terrorism it seems to have receded and stayed away. Alexandria was also far from the areas which were affected by that.
I'm quite tired of hearing people justify atrocities on the basis of the atrocities not affecting them.
No one is justifying the atrocities.