Terrorism is a Hydra
Amy wrote:
(quoting me)
"RE: "This is breathtakingly false"
"I couldn't agree with you more. ...And it is actually breath-takingly shocking too. "
No one has ever accused me of being a modern liberal, least of all a simp-wimp "can't we all just get along?" whiner, but the calls in recent days for striking back at anyone who didn't express the "proper" attitude (including cheering Palestinians) and any nation which doesn't "do enough" is just plain crazy.
I personally didn't cheer the WTC act, of course, but it's not terribly surprising to me that _somewhere_ there were spontaneous cheerings. THIS DOES NOT MAKE THE CHEERING KIDS AND OTHERS responsible for the bombing!
(Nor is censoring the press, as the Palestinian Authority is doing: they seized videotapes from journalists and returned them with the scenes of cheering Palestinians edited out. )
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is thousands of years old. We can shake our heads at such cheering, but it is no cause for bombing Iranians or Palestinians, nor for driving cars into mosques, nor for killing Sikhs who someone thinks look like "ragheads."
If we want to declare war on a billion Muslims around the world (and Hindus mistaken as Muslims!), this is one way to start. I expect the hundred or so Al Quida (The Base) cell members will cheer such a declaration of war by America on Islam: it may even be what they are hoping for.
Even Afghanistan is hard to blame as an entire country. 97% of the population is dirt-poor and has nothing whatsoever to do with recent actions. Maybe even 99.9%. Claiming that the residents are "responsible" because they somehow haven't risen up and thrown out the Taliban (if in fact the Taliban support OBL, and if in fact OBL was involved) is absurd in the extreme: the CIA funded the Taliban and gave them the weapons they need to keep the peasants under control.
Is it hopeless? No, but almost.
Terrorism is a very cheap crime to commit. Think of how little that knife-based attack on the airlines cost. Think of how little a jar of botulism costs to make. Think of how little, even, a suitcase nuke costs compared to the costs of an ordinary war.
Terrorism is also a Hydra. Cut the head off and more heads will sprout. If we start carpet-bombing Afghanistan, filling refugee camps in Pakistan with a milion refugees, then those refugee camps will breed terrorists/freedom fighters as we see even today in Palestine.
And if the U.S. bribes Pakistan by "forgiving" its $30 billion debt, as is now being discussed, then other nations will realize they can shake down Uncle Sam by funding nearby terrorist actitivies...it will never end.
Maybe this will be a nice, clean surgical strike...but don't count on it. I expect attacks on the U.S. with Stinger missiles (provided to the Afghans by the CIA) and biological weapons (though the first attempts may fizzle...nobody's really had much practice deploying them yet).
Attacks on Europe or Asia would fit OBL's M.O., however. Never strike where expected. Strike for maximum disruption.
--Tim May |
