As I react with incredulity at the conduct of this administration, there is so much to rail against that I, along with many others, have cut back on scrutinizing all the accounts. As someone who has taken to passing information along, my alternative has been to say more about crop circles, which are a source of potential breakthrough, than to keep wallowing in political breakdown. But sometimes I come across something so compelling that instead of speed reading it I slow down to take in every word. The latest thing I've ingested this way is an excerpt from Joseph Wilson's new book, The Politics of Truth, that was posted on the Truthout.com website a couple of days ago. I'm not going to excerpt it here so that you don't get a few bites and think you've had enough. For a penetrating exposé, The Cult That's Running the Country: Joseph Wilson blasts the secretive neoconservative cabal that plunged America into a disastrous war, do read it all.
I mean sooner or later terror and weapons of mass destruction are going to get together, it’s just a matter of time. This reflects an extremely broad consensus among analysts. There’s also a consensus on how to deal with terror, a strong consensus and it has two elements: there are the terrorists themselves and there is the potential reservoir of support and sympathy which they’re trying to mobilize. They regard themselves as the vanguard trying to mobilize support. The reservoir of sympathy may be people who hate them and fear them and hate what they do but nevertheless recognize that there is some justice in their cause. So how do you deal with the two groups? Well the terrorists, you deal with them as with other criminal actions, through police actions, which turns out to be have been quite successful. There has been considerable success in finding leaders, in trying them and breaking up the financing networks.
What about the potential reservoir? Well on that again there is strong agreement. What you have to do is ask them what their grievances are. They have grievances, many of them are quite legitimate, so you address those legitimate grievances. I mean that should be done apart from the threat of terror, but just focusing on terror, if you address the legitimate grievances that will reduce the ability of the vanguard to mobilize support because it’s based on grievances.
On the other hand if you want to help the terrorist then just use violence because that will antagonize and infuriate the reservoir. It will increase recruitment to the terrorist groups, so we have a choice. Either can reduce the threat of terror or we can increase it. This administration and Blair are consciously acting to increase it.
Blair is particularly interesting because the British have just been through this in Northern Ireland. As long as they reacted to IRA terror by increasing violence they stimulated it. As soon as they began, for the first time, to pay some attention to the grievances they were able to reduce it. In fact Belfast is not paradise but it is a lot better than it was ten years ago
As far as I know, every former head of Israeli Military Intelligence and of the general security services has said the same thing: that is if you want to fight terror with violence then you’re asking for an unwinnable war. If you give the people some respect and pay attention to their grievances then you can reach an accommodation, that’s been very generally true.
There’s only one way in which violence works and that’s through extermination, then it works. So take, say, the United States, the United States does not have a lot of internal conflicts and it has a single language over a huge territory and why? It exterminated the native population. If you do that you don’t have any problems, but anything that falls short of extermination or mass expulsion then it’s going to escalate a cycle of violence. It’s always terrible but by now it has become lethal to survival because of our capacity for destruction.
From: David Langer [david@2langers.com]
The Chomsky piece is, of course, what we've all been saying for a long time. I'm printing out the Wilson piece to read. I saw him in Larry king last night. He's a true patriot. I think this military abuse scandal could do them in. I think they will probably find a cover-up.
From Suzanne To David:
The extermination idea was a new one to me — something to add to the mix to chew on. Interesting in these times that hawks — like Wilson — are heroes to us. I don't know about doing them in. With every new horror it seems that will be it, but it never is. In fact, it will be ironic if the abuse gets him, because it's the only awful perpetration that he hasn't had his own hand in. I think it's indicative of what happens when you train people to be killers — the fall-out of a humanity still committed to uncivilized practices. How can you turn people into murderers and expect them to behave civilly when not on killing duty? “Just following orders” is some defense when you see the look of glee on their faces, not to mention how no one we know would accept an order like that.
From: Joyce Kovelman [ASOUL1@aol.com]
I agree with these postings. Violence breeds more violence. Israel, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, and Ireland all teach the same lesson. The idea of finding out what the anger and intolerances are (most real and inhumane), is the only way to correct hurt and wrong doings and start turning this around. That was the magnificence of the Marshall and Truman plans. They sent aid, helped developed positive infrastructure in the countries assisted, and turned victims into winners. Everyone won. The amount of money we spend on military and war could easily be used in more humane and positive ways to effect change (with the people involved in the process) and we might really move forward. Defeating an enemy keeps them an enemy which erupts once they find an opportunity. The opposite is also true and what we need to focus upon and where change is dearly needed. It is not possible to dictate Democracy.
Follow
