[Austin-ghetto-list] TERRORISM!!!!!!!!!!!

[Roger Baker]

[both these pieces seem to make uncommonly good sense. The first came
from the Methodists via a Texas green and the second from Jay Hanson on
one of the energy lists. -- Roger]


> > How to defeat bin Laden
> >
> > By Michael T. Klare
> > (professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College)
> >
> >  Sept. 13, 2001 | If, as appears increasingly likely, groups
> >  associated with terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden are found to be
> > responsible for Tuesday's murderous attacks in New York and
> >  Washington, the United States would be fully justified in taking
> >  vigorous action to apprehend and punish him and to put his terror
> >  networks out of business. The question then becomes: What strategy
> >  will best accomplish this objective?
> >
> >  There are many in Washington and around the country who believe that
> >  the United States should declare war on bin Laden -- along with any
> >  governments that have given him assistance of one sort or another --
> >  and employ the full weight of American military power to accomplish
> >  this purpose. Such action would undoubtedly help restore confidence
> >  in the power of the American nation, and provide a degree of
> >  satisfaction to those who crave retribution for Tuesday's horrific
> >  attacks. But we must also ask: Will it achieve the goal of
> >  eradicating bin Laden's networks and eliminating the terrorist threat
> >  to the United States? There are good reasons to suspect that it will
> >  not.
> >
> >  The image of American aircraft and missiles bombing Arab states and
> >  producing massive casualties -- many of them, inevitably, civilians
> >  with no ties to Islam -- will surely confirm the belief among many
> >  ordinary Muslims that bin Laden is right: that the United States is
> >
> >  intent on tormenting and subduing the Islamic world. As Bruce Shapiro
> >  has observed, out of the rubble of American attacks will come
> >  thousands of new volunteers for bin Laden's anti-American jihad.
> >
> >  Even more troubling, it is highly unlikely that such action will
> >  actually succeed in crippling bin Laden's underground networks.
> >  Unlike conventional military forces, these groups do not maintain
> >  fixed bases and installations but move from one camouflaged location
> >  to another -- all over the world. (Several of the terrorists
> >  suspected of involvement in Tuesday's attacks are now thought to have
> >  spent the past year hiding in a quiet, inconspicuous neighborhood in
> >  Hamburg, Germany.) Some of these groups may get caught in the U.S.
> >  attacks, but others will surely escape -- and remain in position to
> >  conduct new  acts of terrorism.
> >
> >  As an alternative to military action of this sort, I propose a
> >  strategy that combines global law enforcement collaboration plus
> >  moral and religious combat. It would compel the Bush administration
> >  to drop its war rhetoric and instead treat its hunt for bin Laden as
> >  a criminal investigation.
> >
> >  It will not be possible to put bin Laden's networks out of operation
> >  without the cooperation of police and intelligence personnel all over
> >  the globe--including the Islamic world. The best way to do this is
> >  to brand bin Laden and his associates as mass murderers who are
> >  sought for trial and punishment under U.S. law -- as has been done
> >  with other suspected terrorists. Then, the United States should order
> >  a massive global manhunt to capture bin Laden and all of his
> >  associates, wherever they dwell. It will be much harder for an
> >  Islamic government to refuse our requests for assistance in tracking
> >  down and arresting bin Laden's associates if we indict them for
> >  multiple murders and portray this as a criminal matter. The
> >  deliberate murder of innocents is a crime and an abomination in all
> >  societies -- Islamic ones no less than any others.
> >
> >  Furthermore, to prevent the recruitment of additional volunteers into
> >  bin Laden's networks (or others of their type), we have to take
> >  pains to show that he is the enemy of authentic Islam. Bin Laden
> >  has succeeded in recruiting followers up until now--volunteers who
> >  are willing to sacrifice their lives--because he has been able to
> >  portray himself as the true defender of Islam. Now, we must seek out
> >  and ally ourselves with the vast number of Muslims who are repelled
> >  and horrified by the death of so many innocent people in New York and
> >  Washington. We must encourage influential Muslim clerics to condemn
> >  bin Laden as an enemy of true Islamic belief. Only in this way can we
> >  silence him (and his kind) forever.
> >
> >  To win over peace-minded Muslims to our side in this struggle, we
> >  will, of course, have to show greater sympathy for their concerns.
> >  This includes, for example, the plight of ordinary Palestinians in
> >  the West Bank and Gaza, and the suffering of the Iraqi civilians who
> >  are denied basic goods and medicine due to the U.S.-backed economic
> >  sanctions. This need not entail a sudden about-face in U.S. policy,
> >  but would require greater public recognition of others' pain and
> >  suffering. After all, we are now victims too -- and this gives us a
> >  common basis upon which to ask for their assistance in a common
> >  struggle against violence and terrorism.
> >
> >  I know that the calls for military action will grow in volume. And I
> >  share a sense of outrage against those who killed so many of our
> >  countrymen and women. But I want the campaign against bin Laden to
> >  succeed -- both in a practical and a moral sense. Battle cries like
> >  that of Sen. Zell Miller, who called on the U.S. Thursday to "bomb
> >  the hell out of Afghanistan" for harboring bin Laden, may make us
> >  feel momentarily elated. But in the long run, it is only the pursuit
> >  of justice that can secure a peaceful world. The best way to
> >  accomplish this is for the U.S. to treat bin Laden as a criminal
> >  fugitive, not an enemy of war.

            *************************************************


                TALK IS CHEAP:
     AMERICA'S DANGEROUS APPROACH TO TERRORISM

By: Daniel Sargis

In the year A.D. 64, Nero, the Roman Emperor, decided that the Christians,
who were viewed as antisocial scum, should be eradicated and preceded to
crucify them in the arena, throw them to wild animals, and burn them alive
as living torches to light Nero's garden at his Golden House. 2000 years
later the Roman Empire is a dusty chapter in a boring history book and
Christianity is one of the dominant world religions.

On August 4 of 1964 President of The United States, Lyndon B. Johnson,
issued an immediate response to acts of aggression committed by the North
Vietnamese against the  United States in the Gulf Of Tonkin:
               My fellow Americans: - As President and Commander in
               Chief, it is my duty to the American people to report
               that renewed hostile actions against United States ships
               on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today
               required me to order the military forces of the United
               States to take action in reply.

Ten years and 50,000 dead Americans later, the last helicopter lifted off
the roof of  the United States Embassy in Saigon as the United States
retreated in disgrace from a war with no winners.

The Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 with some of the
heaviest armed and equipped divisions known to military history. During ten
years of warfare utilizing some of the world's best weapons, artillery and
combat aircraft the Soviet Union inflicted a ruthlessness on the Afghan
people few in America would understand or tolerate. "Before the war, the
Afghan population is estimated to have been somewhat more than fifteen
million people. Over five million --- a third of the country --- became
refugees, mostly in Pakistan and Iran; the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees called this ``migratory genocide. Millions more became refugees
within the country, swelling the population of Kabul. Another million people
were killed, either in fighting, or in massacres by Soviet troops, or by
sheer starvation."

Ten years later, in 1989, the Soviets withdrew in humiliating defeat from
Afghanistan minus almost 500,000 Soviet casualties and combat losses.

On September 12, 2001, in response to the terrorism of September 11,
President George W. Bush proclaimed:

               The American people need to know that we're facing a
               different enemy than we have ever faced. This enemy hides
               in shadows, and has no regard for human life. This is an
               enemy who preys on innocent and unsuspecting people, then
               runs for cover. But it won't be able to run for cover
               forever. This is an enemy that tries to hide. But it
               won't be able to hide forever. This is an enemy that
               thinks its harbors are safe. But they won't be safe
               forever.

The simple fact of the matter is that the "new terrorism" is no more unique
than the "new economy" was. And, the future policy for eradicating the "new
terrorism" is more rife with dangerous downside than was the "tech bubble"
of the "new economy".

Just as there were basic fundamentals like revenues and earnings that the
"new economy" mistakenly thought could be ignored there are basic
fundamentals to understanding terrorism. If the fundamentals of terrorism
are ignored in a knee-jerk military response the consequences will
surely be
direr than the destruction of equity valuations.

It is easy to kill a terrorist. The problem lies with the reproductive rate
of terrorism when that terrorism is perceived to be legitimate by the
populations of host nations. Simply stated, if terrorists are harbored in
countries where their goals are perceived to be legitimate, they are viewed
by the people of the harboring nations as revolutionaries or even patriots.
Consequently, when they are killed, martyrdom is the result.

For every terrorist transformed by murder into a martyr, ten more will be
created.

Nations harbor terrorists because the nation's populace shares a commonality
with the perceived acts of injustice that the terrorists' acts seek to
avenge.

Fundamentalist terrorism is rationality in the face of irrationality. The
acts of the terrorist seem irrationally inhumane to those upon whom the
terrorism is inflicted. To the terrorist these same acts are a rational port
of last resort. People commit suicide when all other avenues of hope are
perceived to be lost.

Eliminating terrorism, like losing weight, is a healthy idea but it is
multi-dimensional.

A healthy weight loss program calls for eliminating calories but also for
finding and addressing the root cause of excessive eating. A person who only
embarks on a starvation diet may lose some pounds in the short term but
without a lifestyle change failure is  guaranteed.

If the world hopes to truly eliminate the present scourge of terrorism the
journey must first start with an analysis of the underlying grievances of
the terrorists. No, this is not pandering to the terrorist; it is the only
way to strategically prevail against them.

If the United States wishes to wage a truly effective war against terrorism
it must first delegitimize the terrorists in their own neighborhood. The
perceived underlying injustices that created the base for terrorist support
must be addressed. If the perceived injustices are not addressed, terrorism
will just keep reproducing itself because it will continue to exist in a
nurturing environment (its host countries).

If history is any guide, it is a certainty that the short-term conquest
of a
people by an empire solely through the use of force is the first step
down a
slippery slope of self-destruction for the empire.

If the United States removes legitimacy from the terrorist by addressing the
grievances that help to nourish the terrorism, it can then successfully
excise the malignancy from the world. If however the United States believes
that it can kill terrorism by the sole means of massive retaliatory strikes,
like morphine for a cancer patient, it may feel good for a while but the
outcome is exponential cell growth and failure.

In this very dangerous time of high emotions may we, as a nation, pray that
logical heads prevail. Let America truly learn the lesson of all the
Vietnams and take a system-wide strategic approach to terrorism and not
become mired down in the failed hope of killing this disease one cell at a
time.



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