I gave Brian Williams a pass last week. When, in response to the rumors that Iran's newly "elected" president was a former American Embassy hostage-taker, he opined: What would it all matter if proven true? Someone brought up today: The first several U.S. presidents were certainly revolutionaries... and might have been called "terrorists" at the time by the BRITISH CROWN, after all... I chalked up the resulting furor to our tendency to forget that Brian Williams is not a sooper-genius political scientist, he's a pretty boy who's spent a bundle on elocution lessons so he can get paid to sit in front of a teleprompter reading the news out loud.
Sitting here with one window open on video of a red metal wreck that used to be a double-decker bus, and another streaming audio of Tony Blair (shaken, but somehow stirring) I'm not so generous. What does it matter? George Washington didn't pay the Sons of Liberty and the Green Mountain Boys to blow up Thames pleasure boats and Cheapside hackney coaches full of women and children. Iran, through Hamas and al-Quaeda, does the 21st century equivalent. George III was a nutty old coot, but I'm pretty sure even he could have discerned the difference.
Yes, there's the little point about the American Revolutionaries not being terrorists and actually meeting the British on the field of battle in declared hostilities.
ReplyDeleteBut it's okay when it's the unavoidable collateral damage caused by your so-called "smart" bombs, right?
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid, Burwell, that your contention doesn't quite grasp the complex nature of guerilla/terrorist warfare.
ReplyDeleteSince we are on the receiving end, we tend to view terrorism as a criminal and pointlessly destructive act. Unfortunately, it is far from pointless.
Terrorism's purpose is exactly what it says: to sow terror. When faced with an enemy of overwhelming power, traditional warfare goes out the window. If attacking the enemy's power base is out of reach, you must then attack its will to use that power. In a representative democracy, you do this by attacking the most vulnerable to force the population to exert pressure on its representative governors.
You drew a line between fighting oppressors and attacking women and children. Your scope of view is too narrow. Al-Qaida has two objectives: In the short term, they want the West out of the Middle East. In the long-term, they want to restore the Caliphate and institute sha'ria law.
Right now, they're working on their short-term goals. The West is something of a boogeyman for the Middle East. Historically, you have a large clash of cultures, exemplified by the Crusades, the Turkoman expansions into Europe, the fight over the Iberian peninsula, and most notably colonialism (still fresh in the colonies' minds). More importantly, now that clash of cultures takes place in the form of globalization, which involves economic expansion and cultural sharing. Globalization, they feel, creates a dilution of their way of life.
The United States is the large and mighty standard bearer of globalization. This makes it the principal target in al-Qaida's war on globalization. Great Britain is another excellent target with its history of colonialism, strong place in globalization, and military might.
Greater difficulties arise when people start to confuse nationalist movements, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, with al-Qaida motivations just because they share the same religion and tactics. But that is neither here nor there.
The point, Burwell, is that to successfully combat terrorism, it is important to understand its causes.
The analogy of the American Revolution and al-Qaida terrorism is, on a tactical level and from their cultural point of view, apt. The American Revolution gave us our way of life. Al-Qaida thinks it is fighting to preserve its way of life. Both were faced with its time's greatest military force. Guerilla/terrorist warfare is a natural tactical choice.
To understand is not to endorse, Burwell. I know it's hard and even offensive to have to consider any similarities between our cultural heroes and our current antagonists, but nothing is served by ignoring them. It doesn't make us any safer, just makes us feel better.
Burwell, man, you're digging yourself a hole here. Collateral damage is acceptable because we can't always tell who the bad guys are?
ReplyDeleteThat same logic goes thusly: American and British intelligence and law enforcement agents wear plain clothes. They are the enemy. Therefore, I must blow up everyone wearing plain clothes, even if some of them are not agents of the state.
Your logic is the same logic that allows Palestinian Hamas apologists to justify the bombing of school buses: Since Israel has mandatory service, those school children will one day be in uniform and be the enemy. It's a pre-emptive strike that might claim some "collateral casualties."
Were you aware that only a small portion of the American Revolutionary forces were in a standing army? Most of them wore civilian clothes, too. In fact, because of this, the British would conduct large-scale suppression tactics that harmed many innocents. Just some more collateral damage because the Americans didn't have the decency to stand up in uniforms.
Should we then condemn our founding revolutionaries? By your logic, we should.
I should point out that my second post was in response to Burwell's comment to Anonymous, not his polite response to me.
ReplyDeleteI continue to find the Al Qaeda -- American Revolutionaries comparison inapt. We formally declared hostilities and prosecuted a war against the enemy in which we repeatedly met them on the field of battle.
ReplyDeleteWe employed some new military tactics, but at no point did we engage in asymmetrical warfare as the terrorists now do.
I also don't buy the American Tories as Iraqi collaborators analogy. In every colony, the decision to join the rebellion was made by the most liberal democratic processes in place anywhere in the world at that time. I don't think harassment of Tories was anywhere the policy of the local government, and I don't buy that it was "not unfrequent." In Maryland, I know of one case in Annapolis during the entirety of the war -- a ship owner was found to be smuggling British goods to evade the boycott, his ship was burned to the waterline, and he and his family were allowed to depart for Canada. No, it's probably not right, and would have been better to deal with him judicially rather than by mob. But it's not really the same as being blown up outside a police station because you want to be a cop in a free self-governed Iraq, now is it?
ReplyDelete"The dirty secret is that terrorism is really no ethically different than any other form of warfare. All involve terror. All kill civilians. But we have the vastly superior conventional forces and so we claim everyone should fight by the rules that mean we'll always win. When they don't we cry foul. Its an act, a show, nothing more."
ReplyDeleteCertainly you cannot pretend to see no difference whatever between warfare aimed primarily at warriors and warfare aimed primarily at civilians. There is a huge difference between the two.
War is never a good thing, but there are moral choices to be made even in war. Deliberately attacking people who are not actively involved in a war effort is barbaric. It is wrong. Going further in that direction to the point of concentrating your efforts on attacking people not actively involved in a war effort is unspeakably foul. The weakness of your side's resources and forces is no excuse. There is a difference between war and terrorism. Both are bad, but terrorism is morally indefensible in all cases.
"Real war is exactly equivilent to terrorism." You keep saying this, but absolutely none of what you say constitutes proof of this proposition. I'll let the readers decide what to believe.
ReplyDelete"I gave you examples of how in war militaries target civilians. Isn't that what terrorists do, and so isn't that an equivilency that I showed?"
ReplyDeleteNo. Your argument drawing further conclusions from that datum commits the fallacy of special pleading, the fallacy of exclusion, the fallacy of composition, and the fallacy of too broad definition.
When the chosen of Allah see their nations as unsuccessful and uncompetitive in the modern world, they feel that someone must be to blame. The natural order has been stood painfully upon its head. They feel desperately wronged and confused. They have a great need to strike out. Terrorism is the easy option and will certainly continue into the future. It does not stem from logic so there is no logical answer or strategy. Argueing the rights and wrongs of the stuation is equivilent to blowing into a paper bag. we should pay a tribute to the islamic groupings which is equivilent to the amount we would have paid to fund anti-terrorism. They would then feel better about themselves and better about the non-moslem communities, and terrorism would decrease.
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