Changing My Programming

[poliphilo]

For the best part of the 20th century politics were a heroic pursuit. What with war and cold war and the collapse of the European empires, we seemed to be living in a time of giants- Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin, Gandhi, Mao, Kennedy, Kruschev, Castro, Reagan, Thatcher, Gorbachev, Mandela. And then, suddenly, the Berlin Wall came down and- piff- the giants were gone.

Our current leaders are having to talk up the threat of terrorism in order to seem as big as their predecessors. They've got us jumpy and twitchy, but we're not really fooled. We've faced terrorists before. In the truly terrifying context of the Cold War they were an irritant; and that's all they really are now. Al Quaeda is not the new Soviet Union.

People of my generation (me included) fret about the decline in the membership of political parties and attendance at the polls, about the lack of ideology and passion in political debate. We shouldn't. What we're seeing is a return to a peace-time normality where politics are not about the "vision thing" but simply about getting trains to run on time.

I need to change my programming.

Politics are not important
Politics are not important
Politics are not important.....

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

So often, you give me something rich to think about.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm trying to work this stuff out myself.

You're born into one world- you think understand how it works- and then everything changes...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That should read- "you think you understand" :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Welcome aboard.

The one thing that marks out modern Islamic terror groups from most of their predecessors is their cult of martyrdom. I agree this makes them trickier to handle. They are willing to hit targets other groups would have blenched at because they don't require an escape route.

I continue to think that the strength of al Quaeda has been exaggerated. We are still waiting for the follow-up to 9/11. The other attacks- throughout the world- have been on soft targets- like that nightclub in Bali and the passenger trains in Madrid. And all of the attacks- including 9/11- have been very low-tech.

This latest wave of terror is horrible, but it's part of a continuum. Here in Britain we underwent twenty to thirty years of attacks by the Provisional IRA. Nothing on the scale of 9/11 of course, but every bit as daring and unpredictable. Victims included soldiers and policemen (of course) but also kids in shopping centres and members of the Royal family. My own city- Manchester- had its heart ripped out by a bomb in the mid 90s. Around the same time a mortar attack was launched on 10 Downing Street.

I think our leaders are overplaying their hand and that they've used the "War on Terror" as a smokescreen for an aggressive (and some would say imperialistic) foreign policy. The best way to fight terrorist groups is by intelligence and police-work. I'm undecided about the War in Afghanistan, but I believe the War in Iraq has been completely beside the point- and has only served to fuel the anger of the Islamic world.

The terrorists have objectives- largely relating to the Middle East. The West could do much to "drain the swamp" by working for a just settlement of the Palestinian issue- and by trying to sort out the mess that is Saudi Arabia.

I don't expect you to agree with these points. But thank you for giving me the opportunity to put my thoughts down in some sort of order :)

[archyena.livejournal.com]

Actually, a note on the "Islamic World." It's worth noting that the Islamic World includes Indonesia and Malaysia and a few other states outside the Middle East and Africa. Most of these nations don't really suffer from the sorts of pretensions you see in the Middle East. Rather, it seems that "Islamic" usually simply means Arab for common use. The problem, as I've said before (though not too strongly), isn't really Islam at all, but an intense Arab nationalism in which Islam is only some small part from which to derive a certain independent legitimacy (not unlike the function of the Anglican Church during the British Empire).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, point taken. Though Indonesia also has its problems with Islamic militants. And then there's Pakistan. Here in Britain we're less likely to make the equation Islamic=Arab because of our large Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations.

[archyena.livejournal.com]

I believe what Poli means is that Al Qaeda is not the ideological or cultural equivalent of the Soviet Union. The ideology of Marxist-Leninist politics managed to dominate half a century with Marx dominating the other. Within that scope Al Qaeda cannot be an equivalent, now or ever. The Soviet Union inspired the same sort of response the US did, darker and more menacing, but the same psychological response. Both were discussed relatively quietly in the third world as though the concepts themselves demanded a reverent whisper. Al Qaeda is nothing so much as criminals reminiscent of pre-modern brigands who would take to burning villages to make absurd demands and wrap themselves in quasi-religious language that offends even the most grandiloquent continentals. But they don't dominate discourse in the way the Soviets did, Al Qaeda is a practical problem, covered in the news like the Boston Strangler and rightly so.