From: Ramez Naam (mez@apexnano.com)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 10:08:50 MDT
From: John K Clark [mailto:jonkc@att.net]
> Ramez Naam <mez@apexnano.com> Wrote:
>
> >The Taliban probably new nothing about the 9/11 attack.
> >The training
> >facilities in Afghanistan were irrelevant to it.
>
> Then why did the majority (probably all) of the 911 hijackers
> visit Afghanistan before the big day?
The real question is, would their task have been significantly harder
without the facilities in Afghanistan? I doubt it.
>
> > Friedman is wrong about the role of states in terrorism
>
> Totalitarian states know what's going on inside their borders
> or they would no be able to do the thing they want above
> everything else, retain power.
Totalitarian states would love to be able to do that. And indeed,
when the major threats to your regime have to involve thousands of
people, it's pretty easy to keep tabs on them. When it's 20 people,
it's harder. If it takes just 3 people to commit atrocities, it's
harder yet.
> If these states are not
> actively supporting terrorism they do nothing to stop it;
> the USA has recently shown that behavior of that sort will
> not contribute to the long term health of your regime.
Umm, pardon? Iraq wasn't a substantially terror-supporting state.
The Iraq - Al Queda link was always wishful thinking.
> >The US attack on Iraq has probably increased the number of such
> > angry muslim men willing to die if they can take some Americans
> > with them.
>
> I'm not impressed, so Muslims are angry, so what else is new?
> Being angry is what Muslims do, it's the only thing they're
> good at, it's just a fact of life that has nothing to do with
> bad behavior by the target of that anger. To put it another
> way, if you're kind to a terrorist he will not be kind to you.
John, would you be so blasé if every person in the world had a global
destruct button they could push? What if everyone had a "kill one
million people I don't like" button? Because that's the direction the
world is heading in.
It's easy to dismiss people's motivations when they're powerless to
harm you. But the long term trend is for an increasing ability of
individuals or small groups to kill large numbers of other people.
And I'm not talking about thousands, like in the 9/11 attack. I'm
talking about hundreds of thousands, millions, or more.
It won't take state support to do this. You could pull off much worse
attacks than 9/11 with no state support. All it takes is highly
motivated individuals. I suggest that the US take actions to reduce
rather than increase the supply of such individuals.
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