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Strategies & Market Trends : Strictly: Drilling II -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: isopatch who wrote (3582)	11/4/2001 10:04:13 AM
From: Arik T.G.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36161

isopatch, War against terrorism is not the same as war against nations. 1. You define your enemy as you wish (groups and organizations not guilty of anything but "linked" to terrorism. I guess Bin Laden himself could get a not guilty verdict in a US court, if the accusation was terrorism. Remember Capone was nailed on tax matters). In industrial war between nations you know who the enemy is, and sort of what the fight is about (usualy territory). 2. You have to find your enemy. It's a war without borders- No gunners entrenched on both sides of an imaginary line, and no rows of tanks storming the enemy land. 3. You have to redefine your goals. Usually the goal of war is to dominate a territory. Even very recent wars (Falkland, Iraq) could have a good measure of their success in term of domination over a piece of land. This time there is no such measure. If the troops conquer Afghanistan and hand over ruling of that territory to the northern alliance, or the UN or to Pakistan, would that defeat terrorism? Ha. In summary, it is not that easy to know what and whom you're fighting against, and where to do it. The only thing that looks clear is why. But you know only one side of the why. You don't know why "they" are fighting against "us". You know that "we" want to get back at "them" for what they did to us, but you have no clue why they did it. It's bad enough fighting terrorism, but fighting religious terrorism is a whole lot worse. In the industrial world, wars were never ideological. There were only minor differences between the sets of values* of individuals all over the industrial world. Most of the important values were shared by all industrial nations and the ones that were different (Capitalism vs. Socialism, Fascism vs. Communism) were not that high in the list for an all out war (Sting was right: The Russians love their children, too.) Nazi and Communist ideologies were means to the same end - more power in the world for the German or Soviet Union empire states. Capitalistic ideology served the same end in Japan and, arguably, in the USA. But when the set of values* of fighting parties is radically different, then you get a real problem. The strongest ideology is religion. Religious people have a set of values totally different from the non religious. For a non religious person it is most obvious that the highest values in the list would be his or hers own life and their children's life. For a religious person this is not so. Obeying God's will is the highest value, preceding one's life. Just remember the assorted suicide cults (Moonists, the cult from Wako, Texas and so on). How do you deal with that? The thousand years old war between Christianity and Islam never ceased. Some of its manifestations in the 20th century were in Turkey, former Yugoslavia, east Timor and Afghanistan (when they fought the Russians). Now Christianity is not exactly what is facing Islam these days. Not a modern would be King Richard Lionheart is fighting the modern would be Salah-a-Dinn. It's the western world (The modern nation state, Democracy, the pursue of personal wealth) against the old Islam. Many say that Islam is a cover to or a facet of other sociological forces (Anti Globalization, North vs. South, East vs. West) but the fact is religion is the strongest and longest lasting force in human history, and whatever subliminal forces are hidden beneath the Islamic movements around the world my view is that once people become religious, their set of values undergoes some radical changes, and it doesn't matter what brought them to religion in the first place, their behavior as religious people will be the same, and remain the same even if the original cause is removed. The biggest problem the US of A is facing is IMO that you cannot efficiently fight against terrorism without restricting some of the most valued constitutional rights of the American people. IMO either America will keep its set of democratic values and lose this war (same as the war against drugs) or, what is IMO worse, America will press the pause button on some values to keep others from harm, and thus expose the true set of values (which are more important, so others be traded for them) it holds, and that set would be quite different from the one perceived and touted as America's set of values. * Set of values - Are defined in the economic way of trade: If you would trade your life for your child's life then the value of your child's life is of a higher degree. The highest value is the one you wouldn't trade for anything. Each of us has his or hers own set of values, but communities usually share the highest values. It is not difficult to show that people not sharing same high values would find it very difficult to live together. Christianity is not a strong religion anymore because the word of God does not carry the highest value to the believers. Not many Christians would trade their lives or even their homes in order to follow God's will. In fact, the ones that do that are called cults. ATG