Terror

[poliphilo]

We've been sold a lie.

There is no Al Quaida.

I mean, if there was a big, scary, SPECTRE-like, terrorist organisation lurking in the shadows waiting to get us, it would have managed another hit against the US mainland in the years since 9/11.

There are terrorists, sure- but they're not centrally organised or well-armed or particularly smart. They're capable of one-off attacks on soft targets- as in Madrid and London.

Consider that last- aborted- attack on the London underground. One of the guys- the one the Italians are holding- has said the bombs were never meant to go off. I don't know whether he's lying or telling the truth, but either way his gang were a Mickey Mouse outfit.

I don't want to down-play the danger. There have been bombs and there will be more bombs, but this isn't World War III. We're not up against a Big Enemy, we're up against a scattered bunch of stupid, idealistic young men, all fired up by the same stupid, fascistic ideology.

It's one for the police, not the military.

But the lie about Al Quaida, complicated by further lies about WMDs and the politics of the Middle East, has landed us in an illegal and unwinnable war that is simply stengthening the stupid, fascistic ideology that inspires the stupid, idealistic young men.

Comments

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Mmm. The other thing is, there WASN'T an Al-Quaida, but now there is, because lots of different, fragmentary, psycho little groups of people have got a banner to rally under. We may have created our own enemy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Very well put.

We have reacted stupidly (and in bad faith) and have succeeded in making the problems we face a whole lot worse.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

The big hit against the U.S. mainland was a one-off. I think everyone recognizes that fact. The next wave of would-be hijackers was subdued in short order -- by the passengers in the neighboring seats.

We agreed about the "police, not the military" approach after the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993. Our reward for this reasonable approach was September 11 -- brought to us by the same group of barking moonbats that tried it the first time.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

There are terrorists, sure- but they're not centrally organised or well-armed or particularly smart. They're capable of one-off attacks on soft targets- as in Madrid and London.

It's not World War III, it's another Vietnam. How many one-off attacks like the WTC does it take to make a national leader Very Very Nervous. I'm pretty sure the answer is one. And when national leaders are Very Very Nervous, they go to war, even against a phantom, because their inventory of options is limited. For me, that's much more a problem than the attacks.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I think I've asked you this before.

Have you ever read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE (Lawrence of Arabia) Lawrence? He was a very vain man, but a lot of what he said I recognize in the attitude of the people of the Middle East. What he said, in a nutshell, is that the attitude toward death is different there. Death is not ...I can't say important, but it's like...there are so many people. There always have been. It may have something to do with dying for the Glory of One's God (whomever that may be).

It's a long book, but there are some beautiful passages in it. And I think it better explains a lot...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether military action could have stopped 9/11. Those guys were based in Germany- right?

I think the war in Afghanistan may have been justified. I was in two minds about it at the time.

But the war in Iraq has been a diversion from the campaign against the terrorists. Saddam Hussein was a secular tyrant who fought a war against the Mullahs in Iran (which we backed him in) and was tough on Islamic fundamentalists at home. One result of our deposing him seems to be that Iraq (or part of it) will turn into a fundamentalist Shia state aligned with Iran.

We have effectively handed the country over to the moonbats.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

We have effectively handed the country over to the moonbats.

That remains to be seen. I reserve judgment until the constitutional process is completed and the transition to Iraqi military/policing further along.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Politicians- like generals- are always fighting the last war. This present bunch are still thinking in Cold War terms.

The Al Quaida network isn't something that can be defeated by tanks and bombs. It's a different kind of enemy.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

My husband, who served in Vietnam, remains firmly of the opinion that the military of the U.S. and Southeast Asia were winning the war until the journalists turned the U.S. against the military effort.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it, I'm afraid.

But I've seen the movie :)

We (by which I mean our governments) don't understand the Islamic world. The words "bull" and "chinashop" come to mind.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Fair enough...

But I'm not overly optimistic.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's interesting.

My opinions on Vietnam are inevitably second and third hand, so I'm not going to preume to debate the issue with someone who was actually there.

But it's my impression that the weight of opinion is on the other side.

[darlax.livejournal.com]

Have you read Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies? I thought it was a great book offering insight not only into how we got to where we are, but also, how we misstepped after 9/11. I think he is fair in his assessments, backs up his arguments, and doesn't linger too long on blame.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

No, no, there hasn't been a movie made of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I was just giving you the information so you'd know who it was that wrote the book.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I will have to dig to locate it, and I'm not up for it at the moment, but I read that a highly placed North Vietnamese military official said they were losing the military war and all that saved them was the press coverage turning the tide of U.S. opinion. That's a pretty heavy weight-of-opinion on my husband's side, if it isn't an urban legend.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Cos it's going so well at the moment :o)

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether military action could have stopped 9/11. Those guys were based in Germany- right?

Only in the sense that for some years prior to 9/11, Osama bin Laden et al were openly saying that the U.S. was a pantywaist who would never hit back.

It's always a mistake to generalize from one experience to another without remembering that they're rarely identical. But I've had a lot of experience with thugs and bullies over a lifetime of living in marginal neighborhoods. My experience has always been that significant pushback, in terms the bullies understand, encourages them to pick a less pugnacious target. (We have the reputation among the neighborhood thugs of being "crazy," which in their idiom means dangerous, unpredictable, and quite possibly armed.) I'm reluctant to write about our specific pushback techniques, but will simply say that we're friendly and cordial to the ones who don't mess with us, but our response to intimidation includes a nicely calibrated combination of force, noise, and dramatics calculated to attract attention while embarrassing the heck out of them.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

And we get such a balanced story from the press.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the movie Lawrence of Arabia.
I know it's not the same thing, but I guess the Seven Pillars must have been a prime source for that movie.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember someone saying of Vietnam that the USA won all the battles but lost the war- or something along those lines.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

This was different. This was a *North Vietnamese military official* saying that they were losing the war in Vietnam but we lost the U.S. homefront. I may have to go look for it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like your style. :)

The problem with an enemy like Al Quaida is knowing exactly where to hit back. The war is Afghanistan certainly hit some of the right targets (though it missed Osama himself) but Saddam Hussein (however unpleasant in his own right) was our enemy's enemy.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Are you sure? I understand his regime gave aid and comfort to a number of Al Quaeda operatives. There are reports of Iraqi intelligence liaison with Mohammed Atta that have not yet been credibly refuted.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to know what exactly he said....

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't have chapter and verse, (I read all this stuff and then forget the details) but I believe the truth is that Atta's Iraqi contacts were with groups hostile to Saddam Hussein (or something like that.)

I believe Al Quaida had a bounty out on Saddam's life. They certainly made him the target of a lot of their moon-batty rhetoric.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Me, too, and I haven't been successful googling it up. Full disclosure, I may have had it via a columnist who put a spin on it.

One of the things about these conversations that I think is so important: we need to read and, more importantly, listen to, folks on the other side. Otherwise, we get a variant of the "cult" effect -- we talk only to people who think like us, and we get reality drift.

I might re-name that the "Cindy Sheehan" effect in that she is now saying that George Bush is the bloodiest tyrant in history (or comparable rhetoric). Now, one might call George Bush any number of things, but saying that he's worse than Hitler, Stalin et al. is a bit of a stretch. We're getting reality drift in that no one around her seems to be suggesting that she keep her rhetoric a little more reality-based.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Ditto for foggy source memory, but I'm pretty sure it was an Iraqi intelligence agent.

I also recall that Hussein and Al-Queda kissed and made up after 9/11.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I entirely agree.

I value these exchanges we have. And I admire your courtesy. It's good to be able to air political differences without getting into a shouting match.

I'm aware that I mainly get my information from sources with a leftish bias- like the Guardian newspaper and Truthout.

I don't like George Bush- but, no, he's not "the bloodiest tyrant in history" or anything like. It's silly to go down that road.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They kissed and made up?

I can't remember reading anything about that.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Okay, the scoop is that Hussein publicly congratulated Al Queda for 9/11. (The enemy of his enemy is his friend, I guess...)That caused a bit of a thaw in their relations.

It also put Hussein in our cross-hairs to a higher degree than he had been. Folks who go around congratulating people who blow up our tall buildings go on the enemy list.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kind words. I get my morning news from the Wall Street Journal (dismissed as right wing propaganda by some, but it's no coincidence that Danny Pearl was the first reporter whose throat was cut). I also get it from the Philadelphia Inquirer, which this morning used the tragedy of Katrina as the launch pad for a rant about the "silent flood" of uninsured who are being tortured by the Republicans' dont-care attitude. Living as I do in a neighborhood where 95% of residents don't share my views, I'm used to listening and trying to be reasonable in response.

Lstening to the way my neighbors vituperate George Bush et al., I've learned to temper my pronouncements on the policies of folk such as Ted Kennedy. Belittling these folks may make me feel better but it won't encourage folks to listen to what I have to say.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

If even the American press is starting to be unhappy about it, then there is something to worry about. What's nice, balanced Fox News saying about it?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's it.

There's too much shouting and name-calling in politics these days and it's one of the things that alienates people. Democracy is a precious thing and in order to sustain it we have to have public debate which is about more than scoring points off the opposition. Otherwise reasonable people turn away in disgust and leave the arena to the moonbats.

(I love that word "moonbats"- thank you for teaching it me.)

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

(It's "barking moonbats" -- you need the "barking" to get the full flavor.)

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

The American press has been unhappy about the war in Iraq for a very long time. As a matter of fact, some mainstream American papers were calling the war a "quagmire" on Day 3.

I don't think that anyone who stops and thinks about it for any length of time can escape the conclusion that the press is sending us nothing but the bad news from Iraq. My husband expressed similar frustrations about Vietnam -- when he'd see media reports on the fighting, he had trouble believing they were reporting on the same campaign he'd just been involved in.

I feel a bit the same way about the evening news here in Philadelphia. In any given 24-hour period some 25 people die or are wounded as the result of fire, violent crime, or automobile accidents. A very scary place, this metro area, one would think. No one is reminding us about the other five million people who lived their ordinary lives with nothing amiss. Or the team of middle school students who just kicked butt at an international robotics competition in Japan.

I'm not suggesting that everything is perfect in Philadelphia -- or in Afghanistan or Iraq. And clearly, we still have a long way to go in Iraq. But I have to say that every time I read a bad news story about the war that's unalloyed bad news -- and then a good news story that shifts rapidly to "yes, but," and goes on to become a bad news story, I find myself wondering just what kind of editorial judgment is at work here.

I read three papers regularly (I didn't mention one in another comment to poliphilo earlier today. One is the Wall Street Journal. Another is the Philadelphia Inquirer, which this morning used the disaster of Hurricane Katrina as a teaser for an editorial about the shameful lack of a national health care system. The third is the Philadelphia Tribune, a long-established African American newspaper. It's quite enlightening to read about the same events from three such divergent perspectives.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's drummed into us here in Europe that the whole of the U.S. media is craven in its support for Bush and that the only voices of dissent are to be found on the internet.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Despite my complaints about the left slant of the U.S. media, I must say they have *never* been craven in their support for any sitting president. They take their responsibility as the fourth estate very seriously -- besides, taking potshots at the administration sells papers.

Interestingly enough, it appears to be the mainstream media that is willing to believe questionable stories if they attack the administration, and the blogosphere that brings them down. See, for instance, Dan Rather and the case of the forged documents about Bush...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Strange....

We get the impression that the US press is monolithically right-wing- and mainly owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Perhaps we're projecting- because our press IS monolithically right-wing and mainly owned by rupert Murdoch.

Odd how popular perception is so at odds with reality.