Reply To: Political Statements
hey now, ladeda. let's not say things we can't take back. there's a long and illustrious history of mistakes to compare it against, there.
seriously though. i understand the inclination to personify the enemy and to look at this as bin laden's attempt at bullying, but i think that's not the most accurate way of looking at things. yes, he's the titular leader of his organization, but does anyone here really know to what extent he has any control over organizational planning and direction? far as anyone here knows, he's a lot like bush – a face to put on a large organization, a figure whose primary function is not governance, but making carefully managed public appearances and televised speeches and so on. if it were just him bullying, that would be a thousand times simpler to deal with.
instead, what we're really looking at is the hundreds if not thousands of people who've chosen to join this organization because their rage is such that they feel no compunction about killing thousands of civilians to make a point. certainly i feel that this is an inappropriate tactic, and certainly i support taking military action to prevent a second attack, where there's enough evidence to accurately pick out targets, but i definitely feel like it's worth talking about why they attacked and what complicity we have in their current condition of desperate poverty, because that's the only way we're ever going to get them to stop attacking.
that's the thing – someone once said that terrorism is war by the poor. this means it utilizes very little in the way of material resources, so no direct physical approach short of genocide will ever end it, and i know no one here is suggesting genocide. there has to be some other way, is my feeling.
(i want to discuss total war as it manifests in the modern world here, but that might be a whole other issue. suffice it to say, our nation is not innocent of deliberately choosing civilian targets in time of war, and i don't think that was ever appropriate either.)