EVERYONE please read this article from the Times (British paper), as much as people can't stand me for my controversial views please take a moment to read this article, thank you.
you said:
>NOTHING MUST stop us, NOTHING, and until they are eradicated from the face of the earth we MUST NEVER stop.
This is EXACTLY what they want I am afraid.
Democrats should not fight fire with fire
SIMON JENKINS
First the horror. The attacks on the World Trade Centre and
Washington yesterday before a horrified world were the most vivid
display of terror that I can recall. The heart of darkness had come
to the heart of light and wreaked havoc.
New York is a city I love. It is bond-brother of London and cultural
capital of a nation that has entered the new millennium as master of
the world. That made it a natural target of envy and hatred. Those
who question America’s frequent global interventions in the cause
of democracy do so always from a position of respect. Leadership
demands a price. When that price is paid in such symbolic centres
of the nation as New York and Washington, Americans deserve
every sympathy. Words may try to explain such events. None can
justify them.
After the horror comes the response. The wise general always
keeps in mind his enemy’s objective. As with other recent attacks
on Americans at home and abroad, the objective here cannot be the
traditional one of those who wage violent war. It is not to defeat
America, to undermine its economic power or military strength, nor
even to damage its political stability. Such goals are unachievable.
That is why comparisons with Pearl Harbor are silly. The objective
is to publicise a cause, humiliate America and goad her into a violent
response.
To achieve this goal requires more than a big bang. It requires that
bang to be publicised and for the reaction to it to be equally violent.
Its effectiveness lies not in the death toll — a toll repeated daily on
the roads — but in the loudness of the echo through the world’s
media. It lies in the action replay, the humanising of the tragedy, the
publicity for those responsible. It lies in the aftermath.
There is no military defence against attacks such as these. Indeed
there is no realistic defence at all. America will doubtless redouble
its efforts to penetrate and contain the groups responsible. But they
will not be defeated by main force. Any plane can be hijacked. Any
building is vulnerable. People can be protected individually but not in
the mass. A community can always be gassed or poisoned.
The paradox of new technology is that it makes developed states
more vulnerable to random assault. In the war of the weak against
the strong, the weak can wield weapons more potent than ever
before. Globalisation may render the rich richer and the poor poorer.
But it offers the self-appointed champions of the poor devastating
means of forcing their attention on the world.
Faced with horrors such as these, “anti-missile” defence systems
seem suddenly obsolete. No rogue state needs an intercontinental
ballistic missile to assault America when a boy with a suitcase or a
suicide hijacker can walk through any shield. A trillion dollars hurled
into outer space cannot stop the blast of a civilian jet loaded with
fuel out of Boston airport. Fylingdales may detect a menace from
outer space, but not a virus in a handbag or a madman in Club
Class.
To protect every American building is clearly impossible. To attempt
to protect city centres against suicide attack plays the attacker’s
game. It awards him the attention he craves, the apotheosis of
fame. The constant search for security becomes a ghostly
re-enactment of the outrage, a reminder and a challenge to next
time. That surely is why the World Trade Centre was targeted for a
second time. It added an eerie echo to the “ripple” of the terror. Its
power lies in the memory of blood-stained bodies and sobbing
women, of shattered buildings and a world turned upside down.
If yesterday’s acts were committed under the sponsorship of a
foreign state, retaliation might be understandable. But punitive action
requires a collective entity that can be held responsible. Here there
are only shadowy groups, moving from country to country, terrifying
their hosts as much as the rest of the world. In 1993 the World
Trade Centre was the victim of a massive car bomb. It appeared to
be the work of Arab fundamentalists with ties to Afghanistan and
Sudan. No conceivable response to the attack made any sense,
except to track down the individuals concerned. They appear to
have struck again.
Nor did any good come from putting states such as Syria, Iraq,
Libya, Iran and Sudan on a list of countries “responsible for
sponsoring state terrorism”. Trade sanctions were imposed on
destitute peoples with primitive political economies. Sanctions
entrenched and often enriched those already in power. To sponsor
anti-Americanism has long been a guarantee of dictatorial longevity,
witness Assad of Syria, Castro of Cuba, Gaddafi of Libya and
Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
The ardent non-interventionist might argue that incidents such as
these can be avoided. They would plead with America not to
intervene everywhere and thus render its territory a target to all
whom its government has offended abroad. This argument must be
met since many enemies of America will cite it. They will point out
that the scenes on television yesterday were different only in degree
from those experienced by civilian victims of American bombing in
Yugoslavia and Iraq. Those critical of Nato bombing might offer
America more sympathy if Nato had offered sympathy for the
hundreds of civilian deaths from its missiles and cluster bombs far
from home. US generals openly demanded the bombing of civilian
targets in Belgrade and Baghdad, to “break the will” of local people.
Is that not what the perpetrators of yesterday’s outrage might say?
Here we tread warily. Sponsoring the state of Israel led America
into a prolonged and senseless hostility to the cause of the
dispossessed Palestinians. The financing of anti-Soviet warlords in
Afghanistan in the 1980s armed and galvanised terrorist groups,
including Osama bin Laden and others behind the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Centre. The criminalisation by the Americans of
the trade in heroin and cocaine, of which America is the major
consumer, ensures that crime triumphs in states throughout Asia and
South America. The continuance of the Kuwaiti policing operation
into weekly bombing of Iraq has made Saddam a regional hero and
America an object of regional hatred.
These were not wise policies. The true policeman does not just
project his awesome authority across the globe, he thinks through
the consquences of his policy. But that is an issue distinct from
yesterda’'s events. The new Anglo-American “moral imperium”
may be no less imperial than the old one, but I do not believe it to be
cynical. The bombing of the Serbs and Iraqis was undertaken in the
cause of peace. It was without self-interest on Nato’s part.
America and its allies have “taken up the white man’s burden” with
honest intent. They have done so aware of Kipling’s feared reward,
“the blame of those ye better,/ The hate of those ye guard”. The
wrong turns of Western policy in the Middle East may help to
explain yesterday’s slaughter. They in no way excuse it. Nobody
should want to see America terrorised into isolationism.
To seek revenge would be senseless. America showed after attacks
on its East African embassies in 1998 that it regards revenge as a
legitimate weapon in its geopolitical arsenal. The bombing of
Afghanistan was ineffective. That of Sudan was illegal and militarily
indefensible. Revenge is not the response of a sophisticated political
community. America above all should know Thomas Paine’s plea,
to “lay the axe to the root and teach governments humanity . . .
sanguinary punishments corrupt mankind”.
To react to an atrocity by abandoning the customary self-control of
democracy is to help the terrorist to do his work. He wants America
to behave as the regional bully of local demonology. To extend
further America’s Middle East economic santions, isolation and
military aggression offers succour to the terrorist. These policies
have not hastened the spread of democracy or stability through the
region. They have, if anything, done the reverse. They should be
replaced with policies of engagement, trade, friendship and contact.
The message of yesterday’s incident is that, for all its horror, it does
not and must not be allowed to matter. It is a human disaster, an
outrage, an atrocity, an unleashing of the madness of which the
world will never be rid. But it is not politically significant. It does not
tilt the balance of world power one inch. It is not an act of war.
America’s leadership of the West is not diminished by it. The cause
of democracy is not damaged, unless we choose to let it be
damaged.
Maturity lies in learning to live, and sometimes die, with the
madmen.
simon.jenkins@thetimes.co.uk |
