Re: terrorism, what is and what should never be

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Nov 28 2001 - 12:01:17 MST


Pat Fallon wrote:
>
> Some thoughts on the subject of terrorism, for what it's worth.
snip
>
> Many other Western countries are wealthy, have an extensive industrial and
> commercial presence overseas, support religious freedoms, democracy, export
> their culture, products and services, yet seem to have much less of a
> problem with terrorism than does the U.S.

This is incorrect. No other nation exports its culture and media to the
level that the US does. I defy you to show any other nation that shows a
trade surplus in news media, entertainment, and other cultural markets
to rival that of the US.

Most nations that have a worldwide brand recognition generally do so for
less than a handfull of brand names. I defy you to show a list of
worldwide brand names that is not overwhelmingly dominated by those
originating in the US.

>
> In 1997 it was estimated that roughly 1/3 of all terrorist attacks worldwide
> are perpetrated against US targets [1]. This is high considering that the
> US [unlike other nations targeted for terrorism like Algeria, Turkey, the
> UK] has no internal civil war or quarrels with its neighbors that spawn
> terrorism.

If you had measured this in 1987, you would have seen that the
overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks occured in western europe.
Western European nations got tough on terrorism in some cases, and in
others bribed the foreign powers sponsoring the terrorists to stop
targeting them (the primary French practice). They put soldiers armed
with machine guns in many public venues.

Furthermore, this is ENTIRELY ignoring the record of domestic terrorism
here in the US by Americans. The above referenced study counts the Ruby
Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City incidents as terrorist attacks (despite
the fact that the first two were instigated by the government), for
example. The study also counts many minor incidents of vandalism and
assault involved in the Sagebrush Rebellion that has been ongoing in the
western US since the 1970's. It counts attacks by Puerto Rican
Nationalist groups on police and politicians, as well as anti-war and
other counterculture groups in the 60's and 70's, Black Panther and
other minority extremists, attacks by communist led farmers in South
Korea against US military installations, as well as attacks against US
military installations in europe by communist groups like the
Bader-Meinhoff Gang and others.

Given all of this, it is evident that the vast majority of 'terrorist'
attacks on or in the US had absolutely nothing to do with its foreign
policy, but with its domestic policies of various kinds.
 
> I think there is good evidence to support the view that terrorists strike at
> the U.S. because they consider Washington to be at war with them. As the
> Pentagon's Defense Science Board surmised several years ago, "Historical
> data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international
> situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States."
> [2] This view is supported with over 60 examples in the Cato paper "Does
> U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record",
> available online at http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-050es.html. Even
> if some terrorist attacks against the U.S. are a response to "what it is",
> rather than "what it does", the incidents cataloged in this December 1998
> paper suggest that many terrorist attacks can be traced back to an
> interventionist foreign policy.

Of those that do have to do with US foreign policy, what would you have
us do? Are you for the abandonment of the jews in Israel? Do you
actually think that the Palestinians would ever deal fairly with them if
they were at a strategic disadvantage? Furthermore, do you actually
think that the presence of terrorist attacks against the US somehow
indicates that US foreign policy is wrong? People who engage in
terrorism around the world are generally not nice people, and their
goals are generally not those which we in the west would find at all
acceptable (their real goals, not just those they espouse in their
propaganda).

>
> IMHO, terrorism cannot be understood or effectively dealt with in isolation
> from American foreign policy. Terrorism is a tactic, and it is
> intellectually confusing to declare war on a tactic. You can kill individual
> terrorists, but if the cause of their hatred is our interventionist foreign
> policy, more will just take their place.

Declaring war on a tactic is entirely unconfusing. It is saying "If you
have a greivance, you will not use these methods to address them or get
attention". The Laws of War were established for a purpose: to reduce or
eliminate the abuse and killing of civilians by combatants in conflicts.
The reason for this purpose is because it has been found that it is far
easier to keep the peace after war if this is adhered to than if not.

>
> What to do now?
> Joseph Sobran recently remarked that it is a lot easier to avoid falling
> into an abyss than to climb out of one. Like other Libertarians he had
> warned for decades that our overseas interventions would prove costly. This
> has proven so. When he was asked what we should do now, he said he felt like
> the doctor who warned his patient that smoking could cause cancer. The
> patient ignored him, smoked heavily, got cancer as a result and then asked
> the doctor, "ok, you're so smart, what do I do now?" There may be no great
> answer.

His analogy can also be applied to the Laws of War: it is far easier for
everyone to follow them than to allow a tit-for-tat descent into a chaos
of abandoning these principles. The current atmosphere of terrorism
exists because we have not shown the intestinal fortitude to properly
punish those who have disregarded them in the past (including ourselves,
BTW). In this regard, the whiners are right, however their proposed
solution is not workable.

However, your counting of domestic terrorism incited by repressive
domestic policies is entirely disengenuous.



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