LETTER TO SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST:
Pf
So now we know. The South China Morning Post thinks the United States is a terrorist state. Just like Iran.
How do we know this?
Because they [you?] have run a featured letter by one of their [your?] correspondents, Andy Smailes, without revealing the a fact that he is employed by the paper. ("The West's history of interference has fuelled Iran's distrust", October 27).
Smailes is the Post's music critic. Yet his letter expatiates on international affairs. Very well, he's entitled to do so, as we all are. But we, the readers, are entitled to know that he is a regular correspondent for the paper.
According to Smailes, the United States "leads the pack by a clear mile", as a "terrorist state", a term he defines for his own agenda.
But "Let's get one or two things straight", to quote Smailes.
Terrorism is not defined by outcome, but by intent. The LA shooting was not a terrorist act (zero intent). The Saipov Manhattan murders were (jihadist intent).
Accidentally killing patients in a hospital is not the same as killing patients deliberately.
Iraq invading the "sovereign country" of Kuwait in 1990 is not the same as the US invading the "sovereign country" of Iraq to stop Iraq and to save Kuwaitis.
Surely this is obvious.
But apparently not to Smailes, nor to the SCMP who ran his anti-American, anti-western diatribe of bogus moral equivalence.
The whole of Smailes' last para is a farrago of nonsense about the alleged moral equivalence of America as a major terrorist state.
It's nonsense. America is hardly perfect; nor are its intentions perfect. But it's not by a long chalk a "terrorist state". To say otherwise is a calumny, and harms the spread of tolerance and democratic ideals.
The music critic of the Post strikes the wrong note in his letter.
Pf
