Terrorism and 9/11
I don't like terrorism. I grew up with it in Northern Ireland. My earliest
memory is of a loyalist bomb going off in the village where my parents live.
I must have been 2 or 3 at the time. Other early memories include a policeman
with a drawn gun searching around the car seat where I was strapped in.
All my life I was exposed to bombings and shootings. Seeing armed soldiers
on the street was a way of life for me. By the time I was 14 I could tell
what sort of rifle was being shot just from the sound, and whether a bomb
that had just gone off was homemade or made from commercial explosive.
It's no wonder that Northern Ireland is still so fucked up these days.
And here I am in the US on the eve of 9/11 in almost exactly the same place
I left Northern Ireland to get away from.
Terrorism. Break that word down: It can defined as “intense, overpowering
fear...the ability to instill intense fear...violence promoted by a group
to achieve or maintain supremacy."
Terrorist attacks such as 9/11 only work once. By its very nature such an
attack can never be done again because people are on the alert for it. The
history of terrorism shows that if you repeat an attack you are doomed to
failure, but by attacking differently each time no defense is ready for it.
This is why US lost in Vietnam. This is why the IRA fought the British forces
to a standstill in Northern Ireland.
Terrorism only works if the terrorists have the heart and soul of the people
they are fighting for behind them. Once the terrorists have lost that support,
fewer people will feel the need to join in the terrorist fight, and their
cause will falter and fail.
An example is Northern Ireland (just because I know it best). The IRA became
a force because Catholics were being discriminated against, they had no voting
rights, housing for Catholics was impossible to get. Since the 1920’s the
British government had instituted a single party Unionist rule that was all-powerful
and all encompassing, and as such refused to change the status quo. Catholics
had been inspired by Civil Rights movement of the US, and started their own
passive Civil Rights movement. These were usually broken up with force
by the police, and if not the police usually
stood idly by while the marchers were stoned. If the British government
stepped in at that point and met some of the demands of the Catholics, and
broken the Northern Irish unionist rule, they would have avoided 30 years
of IRA activity. Instead the British Government (which relied on Unionist
votes to maintain a majority) maintained that it was none of their business,
and ignored matters for about 5 years. During this time Bloody Sunday had happened and
hearts and minds of most of the Catholic population was changed forever.
The IRA was given support from their communities, in the form of turning
a blind eye when needed, in the form of people joining, in the form of money
and resources. If the IRA had not had this support they would not have been
able to support a thirty-year war. They would have been reduced to a few
lone gunmen who would have been easily defended against.
When 9/11 happened George W. Bush could have responded in so many ways and
most of them would have elevated him to a statesman beyond any in history.
The correct response would have left al Qaeda without support from Arab nations,
without a place of shelter and without the capacity for terrorism.
George took a good first step in sorting out the main place of shelter in
Afghanistan. This had a lot of support from everyone, including a lot of
unspoken support from the Arab nations. Afghanistan was becoming a problem
for them too. Every bad thing that people criticized Islam for was highlighted
there, but they couldn’t be seen to do anything about the problem as the
Arab nations don’t really trust each other as much as they would like. Afghanistan
was sorted out to the satisfaction of everyone.
Then George royally fucked things up with this “Axis of Evil” idea. There
is no other way to put it. America lost a lost of support from some Arab
nations with this idea, because to them it seemed that they were only a step
away from being put on Georges list. Instead of courting the Arab nations
and making sure that there would be support for al Qaeda this helped to offend
the nations and if anything allowed al Qaeda to gain respect. Then just to
make sure that he lost all respect from the Arab nations he decided that
Iraq should be attacked.
Attacking Iraq will not end terrorism in this world. It will only make things
worse in the long run.
Such policies play into the hands of those to see America as an enemy, and
will persist in bring a new wave of idealists to the terrorists organizations.
If only George had spent as much time on international politics has he had
on grandstanding and giving away money the country doesn’t have, and eroding
what little civil liberties Americans have left. If only he had courted leaders
he doesn’t like instead of trying to make then into pariahs. If he had been
a real politician and had control of his cabinet, then tomorrow we might
be celebrating a new era of peace instead of getting even more defensive
and scared.