Archive From Elsewhere: 9/30/2001
(Quote from correspondent poster "Shady Backflash") "when you remove threat of death, the whole reward - punishment fabric that so much of social control revolves around just falls apart"
[edit 4/28/06]( The original context of Shady's post was that a sufficiently obdurate and implacable opposition is, by definition, beyond the reach of intimidation by the threat of execution. And suicide bombers are nothing if not obdurate and implacable. As such, while individuals holding such a fanatical level of conviction can be executed, their death will not necessarily dissuade others who are driven far enough along the path of desperation and desolation to take their place. The "rational calculation" of wanting to avoid death is no longer driving the decisions of such people.)
That's the real nut of it, and that's why I think that although a military effort is a reasonable decision to deal with this particular terror campaign in the short run, in the long run the solutions are going to have to arise from taking the ideals that gave rise to the existence of the "Nonviolence" page in Discussion 20 into account. Because just like the authorities can't even stop the drug trade behind bars or invent a 100% escape-proof prison system without the cost being prohibitive and logistically impossible to administer, they'll never be able to surveill and lock down the entire globe sufficiently to guarantee an end to catastrophic acts of terrorism, and the access to compact and concealable weapons of mass destruction, by those means alone. What, does State Power really believe that it can transform the entire world into something akin to the Security Housing Unit of a Level 5 penitentiary? Have the authorities lost their marbles?
Political institutions have to intensify their efforts to defuse the motivations- disrespect, injustice, disenfranchisement, degradation- that give these groups so much appeal, and their concommitant ability to recruit a sufficient pool of recruits to make them a global threat. Because law enforcement, intelligence, and military tactics may be sufficient to deal with scattered handfuls of violent extremists arising intermittently- but not convoys full of them, with more volunteering every day, convinced that their voices haven't been heard and intent on "sending a message".
I think that it's a grave mistake to cavalierly brush off the grievances of these people, never mind that it seems apparent to "our side" that some of them aren't valid. The point is, the way US foreign policy has been handled, our leaders dismissed even the reasonable ones without feeling any need to provide an explanation...for instance, what was so righteously imperative about keeping a huge US military base in Saudi Arabia, once the Iraqi military infrastructure had been decimated to the point where no sane observer could conceive of Iraq mounting another invasion? Didn't anyone in our presidential advising circles, military, or diplomatic corps have sufficent background in history or cultural anthropology, or just plain horse-sense enough, to recognize that keeping an airbase in Saudi Arabia wasn't the same as keeping one in England or Germany, that we had worn out our welcome (such as it was) and weren't exactly being greeted with open arms as esteemed guests by much of the populace?
A certain quotient of suicidal behavior has often been present the behavior of soldiers in wartime, as well as in the perpetrators of violent tactics with political overtones, such as assassinations and sabotage. What is new is the catastrophic "omnilethal" potential of weapons of mass destruction, due to the technological successes of the death industries that have been so well-funded by so many national governments on the planet, including our own.
Imagine, the airliners that those hijackers perverted into cruise missiles were nonetheless merely conventional weapons. Will we break the mold and step outside of the suicidal tendencies of our own self-righteous arrogance, to defuse this threat once and for all, before matters escalate to an even more next level?
[edit 4/28/06]( The original context of Shady's post was that a sufficiently obdurate and implacable opposition is, by definition, beyond the reach of intimidation by the threat of execution. And suicide bombers are nothing if not obdurate and implacable. As such, while individuals holding such a fanatical level of conviction can be executed, their death will not necessarily dissuade others who are driven far enough along the path of desperation and desolation to take their place. The "rational calculation" of wanting to avoid death is no longer driving the decisions of such people.)
That's the real nut of it, and that's why I think that although a military effort is a reasonable decision to deal with this particular terror campaign in the short run, in the long run the solutions are going to have to arise from taking the ideals that gave rise to the existence of the "Nonviolence" page in Discussion 20 into account. Because just like the authorities can't even stop the drug trade behind bars or invent a 100% escape-proof prison system without the cost being prohibitive and logistically impossible to administer, they'll never be able to surveill and lock down the entire globe sufficiently to guarantee an end to catastrophic acts of terrorism, and the access to compact and concealable weapons of mass destruction, by those means alone. What, does State Power really believe that it can transform the entire world into something akin to the Security Housing Unit of a Level 5 penitentiary? Have the authorities lost their marbles?
Political institutions have to intensify their efforts to defuse the motivations- disrespect, injustice, disenfranchisement, degradation- that give these groups so much appeal, and their concommitant ability to recruit a sufficient pool of recruits to make them a global threat. Because law enforcement, intelligence, and military tactics may be sufficient to deal with scattered handfuls of violent extremists arising intermittently- but not convoys full of them, with more volunteering every day, convinced that their voices haven't been heard and intent on "sending a message".
I think that it's a grave mistake to cavalierly brush off the grievances of these people, never mind that it seems apparent to "our side" that some of them aren't valid. The point is, the way US foreign policy has been handled, our leaders dismissed even the reasonable ones without feeling any need to provide an explanation...for instance, what was so righteously imperative about keeping a huge US military base in Saudi Arabia, once the Iraqi military infrastructure had been decimated to the point where no sane observer could conceive of Iraq mounting another invasion? Didn't anyone in our presidential advising circles, military, or diplomatic corps have sufficent background in history or cultural anthropology, or just plain horse-sense enough, to recognize that keeping an airbase in Saudi Arabia wasn't the same as keeping one in England or Germany, that we had worn out our welcome (such as it was) and weren't exactly being greeted with open arms as esteemed guests by much of the populace?
A certain quotient of suicidal behavior has often been present the behavior of soldiers in wartime, as well as in the perpetrators of violent tactics with political overtones, such as assassinations and sabotage. What is new is the catastrophic "omnilethal" potential of weapons of mass destruction, due to the technological successes of the death industries that have been so well-funded by so many national governments on the planet, including our own.
Imagine, the airliners that those hijackers perverted into cruise missiles were nonetheless merely conventional weapons. Will we break the mold and step outside of the suicidal tendencies of our own self-righteous arrogance, to defuse this threat once and for all, before matters escalate to an even more next level?
posted by cabdriver at 1:39 AM
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