Righteous dudgeon and poisoned rhetoric: Recent Weblog events aren't making things any easier for someone fighting clinical depression and the death of a sister.
Shelley Powers, the Weblog world's invaluable Burningbird, linked to a whole bunch of varying opinions, including Douglas Ord's (half thought-provoking, half Bush-is-a-warmonger navel-gazing, if you ask me) 9/11-related ramble "Stereopticon." Today, Shelley confessed she was hurt to hear from Mike Sanders, who has written (inarguably) that the 9/11 attacks and suicide bombings in Israeli streets are both acts of terrorism.
Mike has gone on to write, "Unfortunately some of my fellow bloggers understand and/or support both the Palestinian terrorist reign against Israel and terrorism against the U.S. I can longer in good conscience include those people on my blogroll list and I respectfully request anybody who understands or supports Palestinian or Arab terrorism to please remove my name from your blogroll list as well." He adds, with becoming modesty, "This in no way questions the right of terrorist sympathizers to state their opinions. I just feel it is wrong for me to point to those opinions."
To Mike, I'd say that neither I nor any sensible blogger can deny your right to remove links or choose not to link to Shelley's or any other site. (Though I admit I don't know why you'd want to block traffic in the other direction, requesting that sites not link to yours — wouldn't you want the opportunity to convince people of their error?)
But sorry: I believe I can abhor the evil done on 9/11, and the evil done in bombings that kill innocent bus riders or mall-goers, and still think you're on a slippery, nasty slope when you use different words yoked together as quasi-synonyms — "anybody who understands or supports terrorism."
You're saying that "tries to understand" or "seeks an explanation for" — no, not an excuse or justification for, I said an explanation for — equals "supports," and leaves one open for slander as a "terrorist sympathizer." And you're making an unsupportable, kangaroo leap in logic when you imply that anyone — no matter how appalled and enraged by innocent bloodshed, or moved by the arguments you quote from William Safire, or others by Thomas Friedman or blogger Meryl Yourish — who declines to give Ariel Sharon carte blanche against the Palestinians therefore approves of terrorism against the U.S.
This evening, I see that the abovementioned Meryl — one of the Web's finest and fiercest writers on anti-Semitism, and also the debater who's raised our consciousness by sharing her give-and-take with Jonathon Delacour about separating the argument from the person — has joined the fray, landing firmly on Sanders's side in a tract about "moral relativism":
"This works especially well towards the equating of victimization to a case like the Middle East. The Palestinians are being oppressed by the Israelis, the moral relativists argue, which explains why they strap bombs to themselves and blow up children dancing at a disco. They're not murderers, they're victims ... America's foreign policy, relativists argue, is why Osama bin Laden sent 19 suicide bombers to blow up buildings in Washington and New York City. There is always a reason, always a logic, always a fault. They hate us; we must ask ourselves why, and then stop the behavior that led to 9/11. It must be somebody's fault, let's find out whose — the subtext, of course, being to blame everyone but the perpetrator of the acts. It's not their fault. Never their fault. It always seems to be the West's fault — specifically, America — and when it isn't us, it's Israel's fault."
Meryl: As I've written before, you've been an empathetic friend to me personally as well as a friend to this, by far the least-linked and lowest-trafficked Weblog of all mentioned here. (I've also seen you warn against ad hominem arguments and tell people that sarcasm doesn't become them.) But you, too, make a logical leap I can't follow here: I'm with you right up through "They hate us; we must ask ourselves why" — then the sproing of the spring-soled shoes, sleight-of-hand insertion of the straw man — "the subtext, of course, being to blame everyone but the perpetrator; it's not their fault, never their fault."
This says that seeking to understand something means you approve of it, and that wondering why something happens makes you an apologist for it. It puts words in my mouth (actually, shoves them down my throat). Like George W. Bush and Trent Lott saying that anyone who questions or even seeks to learn about the administration's secret, blank-check war plans is a traitor, it slams the mildest possible disagreement with the harshest possible accusations. It is not fair.
Put it this way: If you don't hesitate to compare me to Neville Chamberlain, I won't hesitate to compare you to Joe McCarthy. And soon we'll all be yelling, not talking.
8:08:28 PM 
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