Trying to bring reason to thesubject of terror seems hopeless. The subject is crushingly-weightedwith hatreds, prejudice, and political lunacy. But the attempt isimportant because the subject may dominate the lifetimes of mostreaders.
Terror is both a real phenomenon and a fraud. Itis real in that groups with deep grievances do sometimes killinnocent people in their attempt to influence events from a positionof political and military weakness.
Yet, following the vast and organized murder ofthe twentieth century, there is nothing distinctive or unusual aboutkilling innocent people when trying to get your way. The UnitedStates and some other states now do it all the time to advance narrowinterests. Politicians who most loudly decry terror display thedishonest, insincere thinking Dr. Johnson characterized as "cant." Inthis sense, terror is a fraud.
Extreme examples often best make a point. No moreextreme example of misused words exists than George Bush, but when hespeaks of terror, he exceeds all his other loose and silly talk. Bushcalls guerilla attacks in Iraq the work of terrorists. Since when arepeople whose country has been bombed and overrun by tanks engaged interror if they take reprisals? They are usually called partisans orresistance fighters or guerillas, and the only reason Bush is notlaughed off the stage for speaking this way to Americans, who cherishtheir right to keep arms against tyranny, is that it is their sonsand daughters often being killed.
One never knows all the terrible outcomes of war.That was and remains one of the strongest arguments against the IraqWar. We won't understand for years the full damage of what Bush hasdone.
We do know that Bush's invasion of Afghanistanreleased a storm of heroin because the weak, though well-intentioned,new government there has no means of governing regional warlordsfinanced by poppies. American troops in Afghanistan are pitifully fewin number--about ten thousand in a land thesize of Texas with morethan twenty million people--and their focus is finding bin Laden.Were Bush to send the forces needed to subdue the warlords, we wouldsee the same reprisals we see in Iraq, perhaps worse. America's"allies" in Afghanistan swiftly would become its enemies. Newvariations on al Qaeda would crop up like poppies.
I read Putin's statement following a bomb attackin the Moscow subway. My God, he is determined to root outterror.
Anyone who appreciates what the Russian army hasdone in Chechnya wonders which terror Putin is talking about.Russia's cruelty and wanton destruction have been on a colossalscale. The American press does not report much on this both becauseits access is limited, but, more importantly, because a cozy modusvivendi exists between Russia and the United States on what they callterror. Russia has a free hand to reduce Chechnya to a landscape oftank-tread ruts in return for its lack of opposition to Bush'sbombings and human-hunts.
Russia did oppose the invasion of Iraq, but thatonly points up the fact that even Russia could see Bush's invasionhad nothing to do with terror.
The Chechens, who for years have wanted nothingmore than the same independence achieved by other regions of theformer Soviet Union, have been treated much the way people in 1860s'Georgia were treated when they stood in the path of General Sherman'sMarch to the Sea. The comparison is apt, since the American Civil Warwas only necessary because of Lincoln's ferocious insistence that nostate was entitled to change its mind ever about being part of whathe quaintly called The Union. His position was in every respect asirrational and bloody as any argument advanced by slaveholders orfuture leaders of the Soviet Union.
As I write this, Israel has again rolled its tanksand armored bulldozers into Gaza. Its soldiers killed about a dozenpeople, wounded about forty, including several children. And thepurpose? To bulldoze three houses, some orchards and olive groves,and to look for suspected tunnels used to obtain weapons. A secondincursion within hours apparently killed another three and woundedstill more.
There are limits to how badly you can beat apeople down. Every time a desperate and powerless Palestinian suicidebomber kills himself or herself in order to attack Israelis, we seethat proposition again demonstrated.
I do not mean to say that all so-called terroristshave rational goals. After all, many people in ordinary life dosometimes make unreasonable demands or yield to violent impulses. Buta person of good will recognizes reasonable goals, and the goals ofthe Chechyns and Palestinians, decent treatment and their own states,are reasonable.
The goals of an organization like al Qaeda areless clear, but it was hardly necessary to invade two sovereignnations and kill thousands of innocents to deal with them. All theresources of international cooperation, security, intelligence, anddiplomacy could have been patiently applied. If you want rule of law,then you must abide by it. If you want the arrogant privilege ofstepping outside the law, then you have no moral claim against thepeople you call terrorists.
I suspect al Qaeda's goals were along the lines ofTimothy McVeigh's or those who blew up an airliner over Lockerbie,vigilante reprisals for what were felt as stinging injustices orinsults. In McVeigh's case, he was horrified at having seen the FBI,impatient to end a stand-off, attack a large group of armed religiousfanatics with tanks. The people were odd and they had broken the law,but they hardly deserved to be incinerated or crushed. The FBI'sactions, so similar to those of the Chinese army at Tiananmen, wererevolting, but for a person like McVeigh, an American militia-typewith paranoid anti-government fantasies, they aroused a passion toplay avenging angel.
The Lockerbie bombing was vengeance for the U.S.Navy's destruction of an Iranian airliner with three hundred peopleaboard. How easily the American government could have avoided thewhole mess by decently apologizing and paying compensation for therash act of the ship's commander. Better still, it could have avoidedthe dangerous act of stationing the ship in a sensitive place duringsomeone else's war.
The United States has made a long series ofblunders in the Middle East guaranteed to offend and intimidateMuslims, especially fundamentalists, the people from whom anorganization like al Qaeda draws support. These blunders must be seenin the context of an almost irrational support for Israel's bloodiestbehavior. While Arabs are resigned to Israel's existence, how canthey accept Sabla, Shatila, Jenin, the destruction of Beirut, orwords of prejudiced contempt so often heard from Israeli leaders?
I suspect the single most provocative American actwas the posting of troops in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia contains Islam's holiest sites, andits population is among the most tradition-bound in Islam, but theU.S. in pushing its troops into Saudi Arabia, made no serious effortto protect local sensibilities. Troops were posted near Riyadh andexposed to local people in highly offensive ways, as when femalesoldiers walked about in Western outfits with informal and carelessAmerican manners. This was the equivalent of having a stripper jumpon stage and disrobe at a Baptist revival meeting, but it was not aone-time incident, it continued over time.
It was more provocative than my analogy canconvey, for here was an insulting presence seemingly kept in place atgunpoint. This was sheer arrogance of power, and later yelling theword terrorism at the top of your voice ignores your own failedresponsibilities.
Keep in mind that the CIA earlier had played withfire in Afghanistan, supplying and training associates of bin Laden'sin America's dirty war against the Soviet Union. The resentments offierce, traditional, mountain fighters were exploited with all thearts the CIA could summon to kill Soviet heretics. Not many yearslater, the same United States had troops in the holiest of lands withwomen, in the view of traditional Muslims, exposingthemselves.
Vengeance is not legal in most societies, and itcannot be tolerated in international affairs. Vengeance-seekers mustbe brought to justice, but we should also learn something by thewhole sad experience. What are we to make of America's actions after9/11, most of which have been little more than vengeance on a globalscale? Do you stop vengeance with vengeance? I don't think there areany good examples in history of that working. The examples set by theU.S. in this are extremely dangerous, especially its willingness toflout international law and concerns.
America's post-9/11 behavior resembles thecareless, arrogant acts which caused people's sense of being violatedin the first place, only now it comes on a grander scale. And theirritating context of Israel's refusal to deal fairly with itsneighbors has been permitted to change from bad to worse. War onTerror? What we need is a war on stupidity.
February 13, 2004
Copyright 2004 Yellow Times, www.yellowtimes.org