Thursday, July 14, 2005
Shamless self-promotion (but that's what blogging is all about)
Here is the link to an article I wrote for iTalk news.
http://italknews.com/spage.php?page=top&content=7994
I believe this to be an issue that will gain more attention in the coming months and years. Hopefully in five or ten years we won't be debating the pros and cons of the invasion of Kyrgyzstan.
http://italknews.com/spage.php?page=top&content=7994
I believe this to be an issue that will gain more attention in the coming months and years. Hopefully in five or ten years we won't be debating the pros and cons of the invasion of Kyrgyzstan.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Another day of fear
London played host to the latest slap in the tit-for-tat battle taking place between the most powerful Western nations and the supposed global Islamic terrorist movement. 9/11 happened, in part, because of the US invasion of Iraq in 1990 and the West’s condoning of Israel’s actions in Palestine. The US and Britain invade Afghanistan and then Iraq under the pretence of the war on terror. Terrorists strike Bali, Madrid and now London. The UK, Europe and US respond with harsher security measures and escalated counter-terror actions, which will result in the next attack. And round and round we go.
In school, I took a course on Revolution and Terrorism that made the analogy between terrorism/revolution (how the Jihadists view this battle) and a virus. In this analogy, a malicious virus attacks the body, causing the body to respond with severe countermeasures such as fever. The virus counters with increased attacks on the body’s immune system. The battle escalates in this matter until one or the other burns itself out. Generally, the body will come out victorious and largely unscathed, but in some extreme cases, the body may gain only a Pyrrhic victory, leaving it badly and permanently damaged. I fear such an outcome in the current ‘war on terror’. The West, the US in particular, has an obvious military advantage in terms of numbers, weapons, and funding, but unfortunately Supercarrier fleets and nuclear bombs don’t do much in a guerilla war, which is what this has become, albeit on a global scale. If al-Qaeda views itself as an insurgency fighting the global hegemonic powers, then the west must respond with concerted counter-insurgency tactics. Brute force, ‘shock and awe’ or whatever you choose to call it will only fan the flames and swell the ranks of those devoted to destroying the United States and its allies. Every Iraqi village razed, each bunker-busting bomb dropped, and each suspected terrorist held in Gitmo creates hundreds of new Jihad devotees. In turn, each terrorist attack against the West brings harsh retribution abroad and draconian measures at home. And round and round we go, until we all live in a state of perpetual fear and the Western nation-states and the terrorist cells trade enough blows to leave both groups damaged or destroyed. It’s like the Thrilla in Manila, Ali-Frazier III, when Ali won the fight but lost the war (by almost dying and certainly exacerbating his oncoming Parkinson’s disease), and while both would fight again, it was each of their last, best fights. It was a war of attrition that left both men mere shadows of their former selves.
I fear that in ten, twenty, thirty years, we’ll still be talking about the latest bombing, whatever incarnation of Bush that occupies the White House will talk of staying the course and good vs. evil, and the government and media will play on our collective fear. We’ll continue to fight a distant enemy in distant lands, filling the coffers of companies like Halliburton and Lockheed with an ever-increasing defense budget, while schools, hospitals and state governments go broke, and gap between the rich and poor grows wider. We’ll ignore the slow erosion of civil liberties, even of laws dating back to the Magna Carta, all in the name of homeland security. We’ll witness a media that is increasingly difficult to discern from state propaganda sources. In short, we’ll have a life that is, in the words of Hobbes, nasty, brutish and short. We'll look back romantically at the wonderful days of the 1990's when the the economy soared, Osama bin Laden was not the bogeyman, and we had much less to fear.
Is this how the Romans felt as the pax Romana came crashing down around them?
p.s. For the first time ever, I witnessed a boat cruising down the river get pulled over by a police boat. The two dudes piloting the boat looked to be utterly harmless and absolutely scared out of their minds. Good to see the police applying the same standards to land and water.
In school, I took a course on Revolution and Terrorism that made the analogy between terrorism/revolution (how the Jihadists view this battle) and a virus. In this analogy, a malicious virus attacks the body, causing the body to respond with severe countermeasures such as fever. The virus counters with increased attacks on the body’s immune system. The battle escalates in this matter until one or the other burns itself out. Generally, the body will come out victorious and largely unscathed, but in some extreme cases, the body may gain only a Pyrrhic victory, leaving it badly and permanently damaged. I fear such an outcome in the current ‘war on terror’. The West, the US in particular, has an obvious military advantage in terms of numbers, weapons, and funding, but unfortunately Supercarrier fleets and nuclear bombs don’t do much in a guerilla war, which is what this has become, albeit on a global scale. If al-Qaeda views itself as an insurgency fighting the global hegemonic powers, then the west must respond with concerted counter-insurgency tactics. Brute force, ‘shock and awe’ or whatever you choose to call it will only fan the flames and swell the ranks of those devoted to destroying the United States and its allies. Every Iraqi village razed, each bunker-busting bomb dropped, and each suspected terrorist held in Gitmo creates hundreds of new Jihad devotees. In turn, each terrorist attack against the West brings harsh retribution abroad and draconian measures at home. And round and round we go, until we all live in a state of perpetual fear and the Western nation-states and the terrorist cells trade enough blows to leave both groups damaged or destroyed. It’s like the Thrilla in Manila, Ali-Frazier III, when Ali won the fight but lost the war (by almost dying and certainly exacerbating his oncoming Parkinson’s disease), and while both would fight again, it was each of their last, best fights. It was a war of attrition that left both men mere shadows of their former selves.
I fear that in ten, twenty, thirty years, we’ll still be talking about the latest bombing, whatever incarnation of Bush that occupies the White House will talk of staying the course and good vs. evil, and the government and media will play on our collective fear. We’ll continue to fight a distant enemy in distant lands, filling the coffers of companies like Halliburton and Lockheed with an ever-increasing defense budget, while schools, hospitals and state governments go broke, and gap between the rich and poor grows wider. We’ll ignore the slow erosion of civil liberties, even of laws dating back to the Magna Carta, all in the name of homeland security. We’ll witness a media that is increasingly difficult to discern from state propaganda sources. In short, we’ll have a life that is, in the words of Hobbes, nasty, brutish and short. We'll look back romantically at the wonderful days of the 1990's when the the economy soared, Osama bin Laden was not the bogeyman, and we had much less to fear.
Is this how the Romans felt as the pax Romana came crashing down around them?
p.s. For the first time ever, I witnessed a boat cruising down the river get pulled over by a police boat. The two dudes piloting the boat looked to be utterly harmless and absolutely scared out of their minds. Good to see the police applying the same standards to land and water.
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