On 10/9/07, David Strauss <david(a)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.