Said consistently explained away the justifications of America’s enemies without endorsing them

Evidence

Throughout his life Said was a consistent critic of whatever the United States was doing in the Middle East. As already noted, he also savagely attacked those Arabs in the West, such as Kanan Makiya and Fuad Ajami, who dared to be critical of Saddam Hussein. After the atrocity of the Twin Towers occurred on September 11, 2001, he wrote a long article for the Observer in which, while in no way condoning what the terrorists did (for he never did that), he explained why they did it (for he always did that). He put the terrorists’ case for them, just as he had put the case for Saddam Hussein. He never ever condoned the violence, terror or torture. He merely praised those things with faint damns. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 555

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Iran-contra/moral-gray-zone material in the reader’s corpus on how intellectuals rationalize state violence.