Terrorism

[pmb]

Every now and then, I get pissed off enough about the news to go on a ranty tear about it. Read this or not at your pleasure.

I feel like I'm living in some kind of imaginary dystopia that I will wake up from - this is Pottersville or Bifftown or something. Terrorism is not scary. Nuclear war is scary. Terrorism is only scary if you don't evaluate risk well and your government helps make you afraid. And terrorists seem to be pretty incompetent. You know what's really creepy? Police states leveraging modern surveillance technologies to monitor everyone without oversight while at the same time making it illegal for people to look back. So what is bringing this all to a head?

The fact that our representatives are rolling over and trying to make it legal suspend habeas corpus and torture suspects for information and then try them in tribunals where they can't see the evidence against them makes me seriously scared. The fact that they only want to do this to foreign nationals is no comfort because a) those are people too, and b) this administration has maintained their right to strip US citizens of their citizenship (in contravention to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which we are a signatory). I think one of the main reasons that people aren't up in arms about this crap is that it just seems so unbelievable - most people wince a bit at stuff like this but generally think of America as A City Upon a Hill, and that's a hard belief to shake. But c'mon people - let's at least agree on some facts:

1. The president illegally authorized the collective wiretapping of every phone in America despite being told that it was illegal by BOTH of the other branches of government
2. The president, in direct contravention to the Geneva conventions, has established a third category of person for whom he says there exist no rules
3. We're embroiled in a war in Iraq with no short or medium-term goals, and no strategy to reach the long term ones.
4. We've pretty much LOST the war in Afghanistan. (Afghanistan? Yup, it's still a shooting war over there, except the Taliban is back in power and heroin production is way way up)
5. Every other country resents us for throwing our weight around, even our oldest friends. The UK, with whom we've maintained a "special relationship" for so long has actually decided to force their Prime Minister to resign because he went along with us.
6. Terrorists don't "hate freedom", they hate specific US policies. Those policies may or may not be things that, when looked at in the light of day, we actually think are good ideas. Not acknowledging this fact means that we will forever be playing wack-a-mole with suicide bombers and never understanding why.
7. Terrorists aren't soldiers - they have no army, no country, and no chain of command. (Perhaps they are then CRIMINALS, and should be dealt with as such?!?)
8. Secret jails with secret "not torture we promise" chambers extracting evidence from guilty-unhtil-proven-innocent suspects are really creepy and, if necessary, should be dealt with sub-rosa and not openly endorsed.
9. By focusing on Iraq we've dropped the ball on the GWOT/GSAVE/permanent struggle with Eurasia (fortunately Oceania is our ally) and Osama Bin Laden is still at large

With a track reord like this, why are people trying to give the executive branch MORE power? How much of this would fly if a *gasp* DEMOCRAT were doing it? Is it that people think that 24 is real and that Jack Bauer will save them and that he needs to be allowed to torture? Do people really think that the right way to bring freedom to the world and safety to ourselves is by eliminating freedoms and our sense of safety domestically?

meme alert: "The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact" is going to be used in an attempt to justify the elimination and curtailment of the rights enumerated therein. The proper response is either: "The Declaration of Independence IS a suicide pact" or "We will not walk in fear, one of another [...] if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men".

I'm genuinely worried about how far this could go, especially if there is a Republican majority after this November, as there probably will be. Republicans need to decide who really stands for them and who is a fascist. According to David Brin, the Democrats did this with communism in 1947, and it would be really nice to see Republicans toss out the Neocons in 2006. But right now Karl Rove is explicitly planning an October Surprise and we seem to already be conducting operations in Iran, so it looks like business as usual.

Does anyone else get an "après moi le deluge" feeling about the way politics are being conducted? Short-term fixes, terror alerts correlated with spikes in opponents' popularity, massive expansion of executive powers, massive increase in secrecy, torture, wars based on lies, huge deficits, ignoring and distorting science, exposing CIA operatives for political gain, and claiming that to disagree with these policies is to agree with the terrorists. It seems like something has to give, but I've been waiting for years and it's still holding up.

How much longer can this hold up? What will the flood hold? Any thoughts?

Comments

[nuclear-eggset.livejournal.com]

I think the politics in this country are far scarier than most of the other things going on, quite honestly. And the bill they're working on... Gagh. The thing is, people aren't doing/saying anything about this for two reasons:

1) They think it won't happen to "us". Never mind that the same thing can and will be applied to a US citizen whenever someone decides that he/she thinks it's appropriate. No one will know. Never mind that the other people are really people just like us too. No one thinks that. Never mind that it opens the door for other countries doing this to our soldiers. No one believes it.

2) The "I'm not doing anything wrong, I don't have anything to hide" though is REAL. I didn't believe it until I heard people I otherwise assumed to be reasonably intelligent really believe it. *gasp* But again, people don't really think to apply this to the entirety of their lives and the entirety of uses the gathered information could be put to.

I suppose you could boil down those two reasons into the briefer statements of 1) arrogance and 2) lack of critical thinking skills. Hmm... thinking about that, I blame parents and the educational system as the root cause of both of those. Doesn't stop us from being screwed, and doesn't excuse the fact that each person has the responsibility to educate themselves more fully about ALL of the impacts of what's going on, in addition to learning from what history teaches us about this sort of thing already.

Heh... is it too mean to sum it all up as "people are really f'ing stupid sheep?"

In fairness, and I'm rambling now, I know, I think part of the problem is that people find their lives overloaded with so many other possible distractions that they don't spend the time to think about these things. So, if critical thinking and a decent amount of knowledge are not already brought to the table, it would take longer than someone is willing to spend to devote to something that they see themselves as so removed from that it wouldn't make any difference. The number of people needed to be convinced that a change is necessary is frightening, and the degree of change needed in thinking... is extraordinarily depressing.

[snailprincess.livejournal.com]

I don't know man. It really is scary sometimes.

I've been thinking alot about how we've let ourselves be lulled into this 'we're at war' mentality. How Bush can act as though we're fighting to survive against terrorists and no one calls it. I mean, in their best year, terrorists killed about 3000 Americans. 40,000 Americans died in car accidents that year, 17,000 because some asshole was drinking. So in their best year ever, terrorists didn't even come close to matching drunking assholes as a danger. Since September 11th, they've managed to kill no one in America and perhaps a few hundred world wide. Since September 11th, 2001 drunk drivers have killed approximately 85,000 people in America alone.

Street gangs kill far more people than terrorists. Our way of life is not being threatened by terrorists. It's really frustrating to see politicians pretending it is. Even the most liberal elements seem to take it as a given that we're locked in some life or death struggle. Even those politicians making a name for themselves by opposing the Iraq war, no one even hints at questioning the term 'war on terror.'

I don't think anything will really change unless we can escape the mentality that we are 'at war' with terrorists and that our way of life is being threatened. The first step might be just insisting to everyone you can find that they stop referring to it as a 'war on terror'.

[pmb.livejournal.com]

A really interesting part of the movie Fog of War was a clip of LBJ stating that the war in Vietnam was a war on "tyranny and aggression". Thus, we've been fighting wars on abstract concepts and losing for 50 years now: "tyranny and agrression", "poverty", "drugs", and now, "terror".

[snailprincess.livejournal.com]

Do you think it is possible to have any affect on the average person with a rational evaluation of the dangers of terrorism. Thinking hypothetically for a minute, could you have an impact with a large scale marketing campaign that focused on helping people evaluate the actual risks of terrorism. Show them how it ranks against other dangers they face such as: driving, getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery.

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

Something else that annoys me is the winner-take-all nature of Congress. Got 49.9% of the seats? Tough cookies.

[jes5199.livejournal.com]

like this?
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71743-0.html

[mycrust.livejournal.com]

That's a really nice list, and you put all of this really well.

I think I lost hope when I realized that people we're willing to keep the administration in power after the Abu Ghraib photos came out.

Well, not really

[akjdg.livejournal.com]

1. "perhaps a few hundred worldwide" isn't really all that perhaps. A few hundred in Spain, a few dozen in London, a few hundred in Se Asia at various hotel and resort bombings, 'perhaps a thousand worldwide' is a better guesstimate.

2. Terrorists have killed in the U.S. since 9/11. We had the anthrax killings, the Virginia sniper killings, the midwest mailbox pipe bomb... killings? Of course, these aren't the terrorists we're looking for.

I agree with all your points, just keeping a lid on exaggerations...

[jes5199.livejournal.com]

I am not even certain that it is safe to speculate on what happens in the flood. There are witch hunts here.

[flamingweasel.livejournal.com]

A week ago I heard a bit on NPR about a eastern european country where the President had been caught in a lie. The populace was so incensed they staged a week-long protest to oust him. I remember thinking, "wow, a populace which demands its leaders not lie to them. How refreshing."

... why are people trying to give the executive branch MORE power

Because the people proposing it don't expect to lose the executive branch ever again, and The People are too stupid and scared to question anything any more. I have no hope for the US. I suspect Ohio '04 was a test run for the nation '08. We won't ever vote the bastards out, and we'll never find enough angry people to get out there and make things change.

My one hope is that the Republicans will tear themselves apart as some of them realize they've voted in fascists, and they lose the United Front Against Terrah.

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

Terrorists don't "hate freedom", they hate specific US policies. Those policies may or may not be things that, when looked at in the light of day, we actually think are good ideas. Not acknowledging this fact means that we will forever be playing wack-a-mole with suicide bombers and never understanding why.

While I agree with everything else you said, I think this is overstating your case. Certainly, a significant part of the motivation of terrorists is specific US policies. But do you really think that none of it is the reflexive violent hatred of the minority of Muslims who are psycho extremists?

I mean, those Danish cartoons had nothing to do with foreign policy and everything to do with exercising freedom. How can you classify the violent response to those cartoons as hating foreign policy rather than hating freedom? It was that incident which convinced me that at least some part of Islamic terrorism is because they hate freedom - or at least, some exercises of it.

Anyway, as a drug-user, all I have to say is: Welcome to my world. Now you're feeling the heat too, eh? Well, maybe Democrats shouldn't have let Libertarians be the lone voices against the stripping of our rights and the militarizing of domestic law enforcement back when the WOD started. Not a good precedent.

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

the statistics from the NHA on alcohol involvement with deaths are totally bogus. There is a whole movement for exaggerating the dangers of alcohol, led by groups like MADD, which grossly distort the facts in pursuit of their cause.

Specifically, if any individual, driver or passenger, in any vehicle involved in the accident, has any amount of alcohol in their system, then alcohol is labeled as a cause.

When you actually study the effects, say by putting people in driving simulators, you find that at 0.08 BAC, there is *no* increased risk of accident.

Not to say that driving truly drunk (say, > 0.12 BAC) is ok, or that drunk drivers don't kill lots of people. But 17,000 is a grossly distorted number.

Anyway, not that this really has anything to do w/ your main point...just trying to correct a common misperception...

[pmb.livejournal.com]

There will always be random wackos. But to become terrorists, they need causes, and causes only come when there is some grievance. The grievance that keeps getting hammered upon is our support of Israel's occupation of a few hundred square miles of desert - which may be a good thing, but it's certainly a factor here. Once you have a group of people whipped up about one thing, it's pretty easy to get them whipped up about other things. We also support the Saudi government, a government which has made illegal almost any form of protest except becoming psychotically fundamentalist, so that's how the kids are rebelling there, by horrifying their parents with their extreme new beliefs. They don't "hate freedom", they hate very specific things, and can be whipped up about less specific things because religious leaders have gotten a big enough mob together.

Well, maybe Democrats shouldn't have let Libertarians be the lone voices against the stripping of our rights and the militarizing of domestic law enforcement back when the WOD started. Not a good precedent.

??? I think you've gone nonlinear here... Why in the world should I feel any regret about policies put together by a septugenarian Republican president when I was 2 years old?

[roninspoon.livejournal.com]

I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when we were afraid of both terrorism and nuclear war. I remember when the Smithsonian started doing bag checks at the door and when Airlines started to get carried away with security. For the record, I found the threat of nuclear war far more terrifying while terrorism was something that was mostly a background noise though. It was handled by professionals in the rare cases where it could possibly affect me, and I never felt like it was the kind of thing that would intrude upon my life, unlike nuclear war, which was a constant threat that required safety drills and warning systems. Terrorism, when I did think about it, was usually the justification for a Chuck Norris film and laughably uncomplex in its ramifications.

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

But to become terrorists, they need causes, and causes only come when there is some grievance.

Yes, exactly. And we have demonstrable proof that "cartoons making fun of Mohammed being published in Denmark" constitutes cause and is perceived as a grievance. Sure looks like hating (the exercise of) freedom to me.

We have more recent proof that "obscure comments making fun of Islam" constitutes cause and is pursued as a grievance. Again, hating of the exercise of free speech.

Why in the world should I feel any regret about policies put together by a septugenarian Republican president when I was 2 years old?

I was not speaking of you in particular, but of how this pattern fits into "At first they came for X, and I did not speak up. Then they came for Y..., Then they came for me, and there was no one to speak up". A libertarian criticism of both major parties is that they give government power which they trust their own party to wield, ignoring that the other party will often control it and do terrible things with it. When the party out of power is disgusted with how the party in power is exercising said power, libertarians like to hammer home the point that maybe it's best not to give the government power, because it will inevitably fall into the wrong hands.

[pmb.livejournal.com]

Right, but they got that outrage and violence from a preexisting mob that was whipped up for other reasons. When you've got a bunch of people bought into your crazy shit, you can get them stirred up about almost anything that is tangentially related. We have to figure out how and why they have bought into the crazy shit, and how we can prevent this in the future. And we need to figure out how to stop these crazy people from having the power of the mob on their side.

In Europe, it's pretty easy - Muslim immigrants are treated like shit, because the countries that are traditionally lily white are now getting a little brown, and Muslimm immigrants seem to take 2 generations to fully integrate and become Dutch or Danish or Swedish or whatever, so people are freaking out that Holland is going to become like Saudi Arabia and making racist laws. There is a ≥35% unemployment rate for young muslim immigrants in Europe, which creates an underclass that gets stepped on. And there is nothing like persecution to make people band together into a crazy mob.

In the Middle East things are messed up because things have always been messed up, and modernism is coming into conflict with traditional tribalism and is freaking people out, and especially in Saudi Arabia because Wahabbi (sp?) islam is the variant taught in the public schools, people have no framework for dealing with it except to assume that everyone different is an enemy.

And islamic terrorists hate the US because we are the biggest guy in town, and because by helping Israel (something that is probably a good thing, although many of the settlements seem nontenable just from a population dynamics standpoint) we look like we are helping their enemies and because we have army bases in their country, because our relationship with Saudi Arabia is profoundly messed up.

So we have two problems: a mob that's already whipped up and perhaps arguably DOES "hate freedom", and we have the reasons that caused the mob to form. The mob will dissipate if we take away its reasons for existing, although that could take some time. But pretending that "our freedom" is why that mob exists is, quite frankly, stupid.

And if I'm wrong and they do "hate our freedom" and that's the root cause, then they won't hate us for much longer if things continue on their current track...

[zudini.livejournal.com]

I think you may have stumbled onto the secret, ingenious plan that is actually being implemented behind the scenes.

1. They hate our freedom.
2. They attack what they hate. Therefore,
3. To ensure our safety, the gov't must remove our freedom.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

I was almost convinced by your point about root causes vs. exacerbating causes, until I started enumerating my reservations, and now I'm unconvinced again :).

It is a good point, but I'm uncomfortable pegging all of the causes of the angry mob existing to "things that other people have done". After all, the meme that appeals to them could be "nonviolent resistance", rather than "convert by the sword", and I believe it is for reasons of culture or genetics or who the cult leaders are in their region that it is the latter. And that is not the fault of external causes, that is the fault of a poisonous culture of violence. Compare to India or China's reaction to being stomped on - say, the Falun Gong or Gandhi. Islam seems much more prone to violence than other cultures.

You do have a good point that the root causes of the mob's formation and energy are other people's fault, even if some of the flare-ups are caused by reacting to the exercise of freedom. But can we really blame the manner and type of their reaction on those root causes? Not every religion/ethnic group riots violently when it gets made fun of - even if it is a downtrodden underclass.

[pmb.livejournal.com]

You think there wasn't violence in India? There were MANY riots. Ghandi tried nonviolence because he saw that the violent uprisings only encouraged England to grind down tighter on what they viewed as a savage land. And a series of extremely violent riots did eventually act as the straw that broke the camel's back over there.

China? Falun Gong is strange, and the whole story is not known. But neither side is viewed as non-Chinese. A better example is probably the Boxer Rebellion, which, again, was plenty violent.

I can't think of an ethnic group that was downtrodden and unable to pursue their objections through legal systems that didn't turn violent, eventually. Perhaps Jews in Europe before the US was founded is an example, but if so it's a hard one to pick apart and learn from - jewish history in Europe vs jewish as an ethnic group vs Judaism as a religion vs jewishness as a culture is a whole bag of worms that won't be unwrangled here.

Returning to the idea of root causes, it's tough to overestimate how much the whole Israel-Palestine thing bothers people in the middle east. When we were in Tunisia there was a big benefit album that had just come out - kind of reminiscent of similar albums by US artists in support of Africa ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_World , Graceland, etc.). There's a lot to blame on both sides, but I was surprised that I hadn't heard anything about these peaceful arty expressions of Palestinian support over in the US. The fact that it exists suggests to me that there's a lot more discontent than we are led to believe. Also, (prior to invading Iraq, post 9/11) people in conversation (male Muslim Tunisian Arabs by and large) were generally sympathetic to the US except on issues involving Israel. It was very disconcerting.

[misuba.livejournal.com]

Terrorists don't "hate freedom", they hate specific US policies.

This is only sort of true, and to the degree that it's true it is only sort of useful. I suppose really what it means is that if we adjusted some policies, we could redirect the ire of those who believe life in a world that contains unbelievers is intolerable onto some other nation.

[Note: those who read some endorsement of US policy in the Middle East in this message have failed their Logic skill checks]

[clipdude.livejournal.com]

A libertarian criticism of both major parties is that they give government power which they trust their own party to wield, ignoring that the other party will often control it and do terrible things with it.

In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, which was undoubtedly a terrorist act, the administration wanted the ability to decrypt any communication with a court order. Criticizing the plan, one Republican U.S. senator mounted an eloquent defense of privacy:

There is a concern that the Internet could be used to commit crimes and that advanced encryption could disguise such activity. However, we do not provide the government with phone jacks outside our homes for unlimited wiretaps. Why, then, should we grant government the Orwellian capability to listen at will and in real time to our communications across the Web?

The protections of the Fourth Amendment are clear. The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right. The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights.

[. . .]

The administration's interest in all e-mail is a wholly unhealthy precedent, especially given this administration's track record on FBI files and IRS snooping. Every medium by which people communicate can be subject to exploitation by those with illegal intentions. Nevertheless, this is no reason to hand Big Brother the keys to unlock our e-mail diaries, open our ATM records, read our medical records, or translate our international communications.

Unfortunately, John Ashcroft seems to have had a change of heart since then.

[(Anonymous)]

I find it hard to believe that the Israel-Palestine issue is really bothering people in the Middle East. From what I've heard, compared to Western countries, ME countries give less money to Palestinian government and have put less work into coming up with a real peace plan.

I'm more inclined to believe that the Israel-Palestine conflict is something like the drug war or illegal aliens in USA. A big red flag to wave around, to get people riled up about somebody else, to distract from the more local problems. In this way, starvation in Africa is a good comparison.

All politics is local. Many Arab governments delibrately stir up anti-Americanism to blame America for their own countries problems. There is, in my mind, a better then average chance that the whole Muhammed Cartoon fiasco was kicked up by Muslim groups trying to flex some political and economic muscle. Comparable stuff happens on the Western side.

What this means for terrorism is that terrorists in one of the various terrorist groups may start out as downtrodden angry youthes, but they are being guided by a violent political machine looking out for its own ends. Iran's hand in Hezbollah, and their recent power play is a great example of this.

As for our local issue of this country, Bush has not really changed tactics since 04, when he was re-elected because the other guy "looked French". The logical conclusion is that the majority of the country is more conservative then you, or too dumb to understand politics.

~Pete, the Boston one