Asymmetrical Information

Jane, I don't know that it's fair to say there is "no doubt [the bombing was perpetrated] in partial response to their [the Brits'] surpport of us ..."

Little doubt, perhaps, and no doubt these bastards would like to do the same on US soil. But let's wait for more news before we bestow blame.

Here's an interesting question: Is London a softer target than NYC? Has the response to 9/11 and the leadership of GWB made us safer?

Is London a softer target than NYC?

There aren't as many skyscrapers, so it's less vulnerable to a 9/11-style attack. The subway system is possibly more vulnerable. Londoners have been dealing with terrorism for a long time. I'd guess they're roughly comparable.

To Norman Rogers: London police have confirmed (at least) one suicide bomber, on a double decker bus. I think your message of caution for Megan is silly.

THIS is less an attack against people, although it's likely killed several or many innocents, and more an attack on our western life style. It was well-coordinated to shutdown the transportation system of a great city, and it's done this to most of Great Britain.

THIS is the first attack in the West, outside of 9/11 in the US, to have a suicide terror attack. Get it?!?

They hate our democratic, liberal, wealthy capitalist ways - they want a return to the Muslim middle ages because they believe it is God's will. Get used to it!

A war for territory or political aims can be settled peacefully. But in a war for religion - since we are Dar Al Harb - the only choice we have is to convert or kill them!

As an atheist, conversion isn't an option, so therefore I support killing them! And I'm a US grad-student at the University of London; like Megan, I have personal ties to those under attack by terror today.

You can't buy or talk these people into peace - therefore we must win the war and kill or pacify them. There are no other intelligible alternatives to this or fundi-Islamism. Get it???

-Orson Olson

They hate our democratic, liberal, wealthy capitalist ways - they want a return to the Muslim middle ages because they believe it is God's will. Get used to it!

A war for territory or political aims can be settled peacefully. But in a war for religion - since we are Dar Al Harb - the only choice we have is to convert or kill them!

...And this is why the terrorist attacks we've seen so far are just the beginning. I'm beginning to think I should move out of Brooklyn. I had faith before, but now I'm starting to believe a nice, quiet place in NH or, better, BC or something is the right approach (Finland actually has a nice immigration policy, too, but I'm not sure about my ability to learn 14 cases.). Not because NYC is so bad, but because the rest of the people funding the Crusade (see above) can't tell the difference between libertarian nonintervention and a spiral of war. "no, fuck you! No, fuck you!".

Don't talk to me about who started it - talk to me about "winning hearts and minds". Invading J-random-tinpot-dictator's nation won't stop it. Convincing the 99+% of the populace of the world that _isn't_ involved to not support the nutjobs will.

Call me a liberal if you like, but more bombs won't fix it, sorry. As alluded (inadvertantly, I think) to above, if we were fighting a nation state, it would be different, but you can't bomb a mindset. So, the options are to turn the middle east into a sheet of glass (political impossibility; there's Isreal and the Sauds. Oh, and that would be immoral, or something, not to mention there's money at stake.), or convince folks we're not so bad.

Since I can't do anything, and this is so depressing, I'm going back to bed. "Re-engineering the middle east is hard. Let's go shopping."

Just checked in to make sure that you weren't in London today. Good thing.

I hope all your friends, family, and co-workers are okay.

"you can't bomb a mindset." Nor can you reason with this particular mindset. However, you can attack the conditions that create the mindset.

So Bush is trying to start a better trend in Iraq - to create the first Arab-Muslim nation where there's a another choice besides straight religious totalitarianism (Iran), a ruling and exploitative clan utilizing religious totalitarianism to keep their grip on power (Saudi Arabia), and "national socialist" totalitarianism (Syria and formerly Iraq). If we can make a republic work in Iraq, where a good many people actually understand what we're working for, then it will serve as an example for others.

It will take a long time to work if ever, but what are the alternatives?

1. It's probably not effective to go right to the roots of the problem in Saudi Arabia, for two reasons. If you directly depose your best allies in the region because they're also part of the long-term problem, you'll have trouble finding any other allies. And if the whole population of Saudi Arabia could vote for any governmental system right now, they'd pick something like Iran but worse.

2. Try to scare the Arab and Muslim governments out of allowing terrorists to organize, train, or even raise funds on their territory. Saddam's overthrow already helped somewhat in this way, but it's never going to be enough. No government can keep that close of tabs on everyone.

3. Try to scare Arab and Muslim people into keeping tabs on their neighbors to ensure they don't provoke us into flattening the neighborhood. It worked for the Mongols - but they didn't just knock down cities, they built piles of skulls out of entire city populations. We aren't willing to do that, or to turn the city where some terrorist originated into a lake of radioactive glass. I certainly hope we never get hurt badly enough to become willing.

4. Try to bring Arabs into our societies, and hope that they learn moderation and teach it to their friends and relatives that stayed home. This might be possible in the US, but in Europe the 2nd and 3rd generation Arabs seem to be more fanatical than the 1st. We'll see France turned into a copy of Saudi Arabia sooner than Saudi Arabia copying French liberalism.

"Call me a liberal if you like, but more bombs won't fix it . . . if we were fighting a nation state, it would be different, but you can't bomb a mindset"

The irony of this statement is delicious. Tell me, Robert, what is that terrorists do, if not attempt to influence mindsets with bombs? To judge by the reactions in many quarters the method certainly seems to work just fine for them. "Libertarian nonintervention" ("I've got mine" indifference) would certainly fix many of the terrorists' problems.

this problem is solvable, quickly, but not in a way that people find morally acceptable.

you can fight an ideology, but have to show the enemy that their continued opposition will not be successful and will onbly cause them unending misery. see japan, ussr, germany, etc. this is more difficult when fighting 3rd world totalitarian ideologies.

so you have to revert back to the old school: punishment raids, indiscriminate actions, etc. best strategy involves the simultaneous nuclear "work accidents" in multiple arab and iranian cities, some of which were known nuke sites and some of which are surprising. i believe the unknown nuke sites include quom, tehran, riyadh, damascus, etc... not saying that its moral, just saying that it would work.

on a different note, can we arrest the traitors yet? mickey moore, gorgeous george galloway, etc? time to arrest the fifth column.

I think Robert actually hit a nail on the head, but failed to pound it in and thus left us with a coat hook rather than a structural joint.

No, more bombs don't "solve" anything. Violence never "solves" anything, because that would imply that it is both a means and an end, when in fact it is a means only (and hopefully, a means of last resort).

Thus, when one side has an ability to distribute bombs in disproportionate volume, they are one of the last resorts available for convincing a hardened mind on the other side that while he might have no parity of ideals, he might prefer less destructive means of publicizing them. Giving grief and then getting it back ten or a hundred fold has a way of doing that, eventually.

I think a little calm reflection is in order.

It is g-d difficult to deal with a committed, violent minority, especially one that has members willing to commit suicide to advance their group's aims. How do you deter them when they're not afraid to die?

Some -- like Orson -- seem to feel instinctively that the solution has to be broad and dramatic, like razing whole cities to terrorize whole peoples.

Yet is that the sort of "solution" that the Brits used against the IRA -- which also featured a small but committed minority with certain members willing to commit suicide to advance group aims? Did the Brits rain death on Dublin because all those Catholics are really terrorists under the skin who hate the secular society that Britain enjoys?

From what I read, Al Qaeda and its fellow-traveler splinter groups are a truly minuscule fraction of World Islam. Unfortunately, the kinds of attacks they've pulled off over the last eight years don't take a a lot of people, a lot of smarts or a lot of money. Western overreactions are probably a better recruiting tool for these wankers than any number of jihadist sermons at the mosque.

I'm not sure it's accurate to say that they hate our wealthy, liberal capitalist ways -- or our feedom and democracy, as President Bush would have it. A moslem colleague tells me that what these primitives see in Western culture is, to their eyes, simply an abominable display of greed, vulgarity and hypocrisy. To their conservative religious eyes, Western women dress like whores, the young disrespect the old, alcohol is not only tolerated but openly advertised, and the unswerving American support for Israel proves to them that we care not a whit for justice.

The history of dealing with past insurgencies (e.g. in the Phillipines and Malaysia in the 1950s) suggests that rule number one is to not take actions that antagonize the people that the terrorists are trying to recruit. You've got to try to isolate the terrorists, not surround them new-found friends with fresh blood grievances. Second, you go after the leaders -- but not with bombardments that will make the leaders martyrs if you hit them or heroes if you don't. Third, it is much better to try and imprison the leaders than it is to kill them, because in so doing you are creating law and order in place of the chaos from which they benefit.

Just for laughs, what if you had $200 billion to spend on a "hearts and minds" campaign? How would you spend it? I know it's not realistic. It's far, far easier to find money to fight a war than to prevent one, but just imagine, just for a moment. What if (egad) it were demonstrated to your satisfaction that all military solutions were doomed to failure? (I don't think they are, BTW, but I see them as part of larger context of interaction in which they play a role but not necessarily the dominant role.)

Any ideas?

"A moslem colleague tells me that what these primitives see in Western culture is, to their eyes, simply an abominable display of greed, vulgarity and hypocrisy. To their conservative religious eyes, Western women dress like whores, the young disrespect the old, alcohol is not only tolerated but openly advertised, and the unswerving American support for Israel proves to them that we care not a whit for justice."

Well, Publius, I guess if those are really the problems, and a hearts and minds campaign is the only solution, then there's really only one way to do it. I don't see how we can convince the Arab world that we are modest, respectful abstainers. So we would need to apply the money to change hearts and minds in the West so that we quit dressing like whores, disrespecting our elders, drinking alcohol, and spending too much money, oh and start supporting the destruction of Israel.

That just might work, but I'm not willing to do it.

Publius, the problem with that analysis is that the extremists aren't content to confine their campaign within their own borders. As for hating western values outright, yes, some of them do, and have said so explicitly or demonstrated it by their actions. Also, some of what the more extreme groups promote within their own cultures are gross violations of human rights.

To look into just one facet of your question: Is the West going to stop consuming alcohol just because observant Muslims refuse to do so and believe it is wrong to do so? Does the West have any obligation to do so just because a nuthatch somewhere believes that violence is a permissible way to combat Western values and may even have wide backing in his native populace?

To consider another facet: I agree that the best way for two cultures to intersect is for both to respect the others' values to the greatest degeree possible. However, I also believe that it IS possible for a culture to be wrong -- namely, when it holds values that are of gross offense against individual rights (even if individuals within that culture don't think that such is the case). For example, in Western society, homosexuals are considered human beings like any other, even if there is a debate (sometimes fierce) on whether homosexuality is an orientation or a lifestyle choice, or morally correct, and whether its practitioners should be granted civil union or marital rights. Meanwhile in some of the extreme Islamic societies, homosexuals are stoned.

The problem with winning hearts and minds is that US foreign policy in the Middle East does NOTHING to inspire oppressed muslim people that we have a better alternative. Propping up Shahs, Sultans, despots and dictators in the name of "national interests" may do great things for American corporate profit margins, but terrible things for our image. What image gets sent when our President is seen holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah, or barbecuing with Prince Bandar? Certainly not, "Y'all better clean up those wahabist madrassas that teach hate."

--Cobra

Cobra: I'd be more impressed with your post if I didn't also remember many, many posts complaining about the one place (outside of Israel) in the Middle East where we're following a different policy. If we're wrong when we prop up a dictator and wrong when we overthrow one, just what do you recommend?

Damn, you would think Cobra, Publius et al could break out of their mindset, at least for a little while. Focus on the chronology: 6 separate terrorist attacks on the U.S. from '93 to '00, followed by 9-11, followed by the resort bombing directed at Australia, then Afghanistan/Iraq, followed by 3-11 and now 7-7. There is no cause-and-effect between Iraq or Afghanistan and what London experienced yesterday. Rather, what we see is a continuum that begin in 1993. Nor is there a basis for discussion and resolution. The jihadist approach, at least superficially, is to make demands on the West (take your pick--abandon Isreal, leave Kuwait, leave Saudi Arabia, convert to Islam, whatever) or face random attacks on your civilian population. Actually, no one knows what these freakshows really want, but we do know that concession, acceptance and turning the other cheek are simply not options.

It is pointless to debate whether a mindset can be fought because it is fighting us. You can't 'non-intervene' in an attack on yourself. If you think pro-active resistance is pointless, just say so which will let the rest of us ignore you henceforth. Otherwise, offer useful advice. Spending a pile of money to make people who want to kill us like us instead is not a helpful suggestion. Good will lies is liberating people, not in bribing their despotic rulers. We see that in Eastern Europe, Kuwait and in Iraq (yes, not everyone in Iraq likes us, but many do, and it is only a small minority who resist, mainly by killing their fellow citizens).

It runs counter to the pacifistic current underlying almost all leftist thinking to actually take the gloves off and keep swinging until the bad guys are either all dead or give up, but, history being the only guide we have, doing precisely that is the only proven method for fully and finally disposing of those who start wars. Publuis, Cobra and Jim S can reason and rationalize themselves silly, but they are speaking to the wrong crowd. They need to go convert some jihadists and report back on their success. Then the rest of us might have some rethinking to do. Until then, this war continues whether we like it or not.

I don't think the radicals have a problem with our culture - unless it is in what they consider to be their territory. Its not that our women dress like whores, its that we want their women to dress like whores. They attack us here, because they believe we are attacking them there. The possible solutions; remove all of our interests from their territories, or stay and fight until all of the radicals are gone. As the first option has severe negative consequences (read oil), we are stuck with the second. I have believed from the beginning that this will be a long term fight - not one year, but a hundred. My guess is that our leaders know this as the current strategy makes little sense from a short term perspective, and perfect sense from a long term perspective.

"Is the West going to stop consuming alcohol just because observant Muslims refuse to do so and believe it is wrong to do so? Does the West have any obligation to do so just because a nuthatch somewhere believes that violence is a permissible way to combat Western values and may even have wide backing in his native populace?"

Aren't you implying, though, that violence is the best or only way to combat "Islamic" values? If you are not advocating violence against moslem peoples, what are you advocating? That was the question I was asking: Assuming, arguendo, that we couldn't use violence for some reason, what are our alternatives?

Obviously, we are not going to go on the wagon and cover our ladies with veils to please some traditionalists in another culture. The issue is not what we are but how we are preceived.

America is home to the world's greatest marketing experts. In the commercial sphere, they are truly brilliant -- creative, original and effective. When it comes to foreign affairs, however, we as a nation seem prone to fits of mental retardation.

When President Bush uses terms like "Crusade" to describe the Iraq mission, he seems blithely unaware that in Islam, "Crusade" means what "Holocaust" means to Jewish people. (After taking Jerusalem in the First Crusade, our Christian forebears annihilated every single person in the city--man and woman, young and old, Arab and Jew.) As all marketers know, words matter. Images matter. Perceptions mattter.

Assume, once again, that you have billions and billions of dollars to spend. How would you spend it so as to imrove the way we are preceived in the Middle East region? What actions would you take that would be preceived postively? What activities would undercut support for the radicals? What if your child's life depended on how well you performed these tasks?

Remember, we weren't always hated out there. At the time of the 1956 Suez crisis, we were seen as anti-colonial liberators standing up for justice. Obviously we can't call up opportunities like that on demand, but it gives a hint about where local sensitivities lie (or lay at the time, anyway).

This is the smartest chat-blog I've ever encountered -- surely there are some imaginative souls out there who can think beyond a B-52?

Publius,

Re; "Assume, once again, that you have billions and billions of dollars to spend. How would you spend it so as to imrove the way we are preceived in the Middle East region?"

I would spend it isolating, capturing or killing the radicals. Most of the people in these countries want pretty much what we want - freedom and prosperity. In time, they will have it if we remove those who stand in the way. In doing so, the perception of America will become exactly what we want it to be - as a people who support freedom and prosperity for all.

Again, I am under no illusions as to the amount of time this will take. There are a great many radicals and many more coming in the next generations. I estimate a century at least. But the alternative is to abandon the region, and that is simply not going to happen.

Now Randy...the challenge was to spend up to X billions of dollars on alterntives to military actions, and all you could think of was "track down and kill all the radicals." Even if it takes a century.

Are you really putting your mind to work on this?

Again: You can do anything you want (except violence) and spend anything you want to deal with the problem of mid-east-origin terrorism. What do you do?

It's not a response to the UK's involvement in Iraq, or to anything else. London is a big city full of swinging bars with a large Muslim population who drink alcohol and don't believe in making women cover their heads. We're the playground of Saudi royalty and probably the single biggest centre in the world for the kind of Muslims that Osama bin Laden wants to scare. We were bound to get something like this sooner or later more or less whatever happened and we're rather lucky that it was such a pathetic effort when it happened (if they were using suicide bombers, four for fifty is a really pathetic kill ratio).

Publius,

Yes, I am putting my mind to this. I think that your precondition that violence is not an option is absurd. Our enemy is not the entire Islamic world - it is a small percentage who use violence to advance their own agenda at the expense of freedom and prosperity for their neighbors. These are not going to be persuaded to look on us favorably no matter how much money we throw at them. They must be eliminated or forced to submit. In doing so we will allow those who are interested in peace, freedom, and prosperity to have them. You want a quick fix? The only quick fix is to abandon our interests in the region. These are the choices. Cut and run - and pay the price (watch Israel go down and lose access to oil). Or stay - and fight. You want this to be complicated but it isn't. Its war. Choose a side.

Hey Texas,

I don't have a problem with fighting. I have a problem with fighting the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons.

There is such a thing as folly, and the Iraq adventure is exemplary. Afghanistan is a totally different story -- that's where our most signfifcant enemies went to ground and that's where we have a legitimate military role to play. Sadly, our mission there is deeply compromised by the Iraq diversion.

Iran and North Korea are arguably far bigger security threats than Iraq ever was, yet the simplistic thinking that stuck us in Iraq has kept us from being able to deal effectively with those countries either.

The bombs that exploded in the London tubes may well have been planted by local extremists. We don't have to track them to Afghanistan-- they could well be in London at this moment, sheltered by islamic sympathizers.

The trick then is to nail them without making the sympathizers more sympathetic. The trick is to get the sympathizers to turn them over and quit making more of them. That's all I'm getting at.

Markm writes:

>>>I'd be more impressed with your post if I didn't also remember many, many posts complaining about the one place (outside of Israel) in the Middle East where we're following a different policy. If we're wrong when we prop up a dictator and wrong when we overthrow one, just what do you recommend?"

My statements aren't any different. If you don't think the US has a hand up the back of Iraqi leadership (leadership we put into place through an unsanctioned regime change of a sovereign nation) I don't know what to tell you.
Do you recognize the name of the new Oil Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq?

>>>Chalabi, once a staunch U.S. ally, was also named deputy prime minister, marking his political resurgence in a country with many sectarian minefields...But many Iraqis resent Chalabi and other politicians because they say they spent many years abroad while people who lived under Saddam Hussein’s iron grip suffered...
Some Iraqi oil officials expressed reservations over Chalabi’s appointment in part due to his lack of energy expertise..."

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:B5V-jyqlDSAJ:www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7666574/+Chalabi,+Oil+minister&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Ahmad Chalabi is the same clown who is mentioned here if you don't know him:

>>>"The Defense Intelligence Agency"--that's not the CIA, that's the DIA--"has concluded that U.S.-funded arm of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources. Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5045125/

So we get rid of Hussein (another dictator whom w
e SUPPORTED during the Iran/Iraq War during the 80's) and through the result of our actions, we have a two-timing, self-serving guy running the Oil Ministry of the second largest oil producing country in the world, and deputy Prime Minister. Do you think that the people living in the middle east can't see for themselves how bad this smells?
This is not to mention the multinational corporate rape being perpetuated in Iraq, or the fact that we've broken promise after promise to the Iraqi people in regards to reconstruction, security and services.

We are perceived as occupiers in Iraq, and not very good ones at that. Those kind of perceptions lead to insurgencies and terrorism.

Mckinney writes:

>>>"Damn, you would think Cobra, Publius et al could break out of their mindset, at least for a little while. Focus on the chronology: 6 separate terrorist attacks on the U.S. from '93 to '00, followed by 9-11, followed by the resort bombing directed at Australia, then Afghanistan/Iraq, followed by 3-11 and now 7-7. There is no cause-and-effect between Iraq or Afghanistan and what London experienced yesterday. Rather, what we see is a continuum that begin in 1993."

You may not realize this, but you're promoting the notion that our foreign policy issues in the Middle East began with Bill Clinton in 1993. Why don't you start with the CIA coup in Iran against Mohammad Mossadeq?
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:twVnUyjS2coJ:www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/+CIA+coup,+Iran&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

The interesting thing about this coup is that it was at the behest of the British, who was aghast at the prospects of BP (British Petroleum) being nationalized by Mossadeq. The requested and received help from the CIA "Operation Ajax" to overthrow Mossadeq in a bloody tank battle, and prop up the Shah of Iran--son of a Nazi sympathizer, who employed a tyrannical reign over Iran for a quarter century.

>>>In 1953, with CIA backing, the Shah ordered Mossadegh out of office and appointed a Nazi collaborator as his successor. Demonstrators filled the streets in support of Mossadegh, and the Shah fled to Rome.
Undaunted, the CIA paid for pro-Shah street demonstrators, who seized a radio station and announced that the Shah was on his way back and that Mossadegh had been deposed. In reality, it took a nine-hour tank battle in the streets of Tehran, killing hundreds, to remove Mossadegh.
Compared to the bloodshed to follow, however, that was just a drop in the bucket. In 1976, Amnesty International concluded that the Shah's CIA-trained security force, SAVAK, had the worst human rights record on the planet, and that the number and variety of torture techniques the CIA had taught SAVAK were "beyond belief."

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:B6Fq5rIM2mIJ:www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%2520Hits/Iran_CIAHits.html+%22Shah+of+Iran%22,+CIA&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

There are more dark tales of our involvement in the Middle East, so why you want to skip past four decades of history and think everything started in 1993 is interesting.
There are plenty of reasons for oppressed people in the Middle East to hate us. Denial of historical facts doesn't bolster your argument any.

--Cobra

Publius,

Re; "The trick then is to nail them without making the sympathizers more sympathetic."

I disagree. The trick is to nail them - period.
Sympathizers are irrelevant. Either they are actively fighting us or they are not. The job is to crush the terrorist element among the population, and we're not going to do that without pissing some people off - people who don't view them as terrorists. But we are making friends as well. Like I said, this is war, choose sides. We will help our friends and crush our enemies. Certainly it would have been better had it never come to this - but it has.

Actually, if the U.S. abandoned Israel and the Jewish state's "neighbors" attacked it and the U.S. did not lift one finger to do anything about it, what do you think would happen?

The Left need not get their hopes up. If Israel were attacked it would defeat its enemies on the battlefield. That has been demonstrated many times before and now there's no Soviet Union to help out the Arab side.

No more Great Satan in the Middle East also means leaving the Israelis to TRULY clean up the neighborhood if the Palestinians and their supporters abroad in the Arab world continue their war of attrition against the Jewish state.

So, I think it is best we remained allied to Israel.

The North Vietnamese lost over 1.5 million during the Vietnam War. What was the end result, again?

We don't have the troops or resources to drag this current war in Iraq out indefinitely.

I don't understand the mindset of people who support this "war" claiming that we're liberating people, when in reality, we're simply replacing bums without CURRENT American government and corporate ties, (Saddam, the Taliban) with bums who DO (Chalabi, Karzai). And there are some here who are ethnocentrically arrogant enough to believe that everyone in the Middle East is stupid, and can't see what the results of our policies are with their own eyes.

--Cobra

Cobra,

You're missing the big picture on the Vietnam war. It is impossible to think of that war strategically in isolation from the cold war - which we fought on many fronts for many years. And what was the result of that war? Freedom in eastern Europe and South Korea - and on the march throughout the world. And what would have been the result had we not stood our ground? Given the beligerence of the Soviet Union and Red China, I think that much of Eurasia would be under communist/facist rule today.

So we have two views from the Left. Cobra, angry Left, and Publius, mellow/rational Left. Cobra, when asked to focus on the 6 terrorist attacks since 1993, prior to 9-11, reverts to 1953 goes off on cold war policy. If a reach-back like that was in fact a valid cause and effect analysis, the Russians would be the sole target of terrorism, having subjugated several moslem republics and invaded Afghanistan. The point I am making, Cobra, is that terrorism directed at the US started outright in 1993. If it had a precipitating cause, it was the liberation of Kuwait, but its really hard to know what is on Osama's mind. Cobra, instead of finding reasons why Al Quaeda is justified in attacking us, articulate a strategy for making them stop. Thanks.

Second point, Cobra, is that, like it or not, perfect or not, the government in Iraq today is more representative than any in the Muslim world except Afghanistan and possibly Kuwait, two other Middle East democracies/semi-democracies courtesy of US policy and the armed forces to translate policy into results. As for multi-national corporate rape, please. That is just a tired old saw that resonates with Move-On.org but no where else. No one drives a Ben and Jerry's tractor or posts using a Michael Moore computer.

Publius, you say Iraq detracts from Afghanistan, tying us down and preventing us from dealing with the larger security threats of Iran and North Korea. Please articulate how our armed forces would make any difference in either of those two countries. Are you saying we should invade one or both? If so, you should post urging tha we double our standing army, at least, not to mention a massive naval and air force expansion, which eliminates your budget for waging an ad campaign to make our enemies love us.

If you aren't saying invade, then the tie-down theme doesn't fly. The 'tie-down' argument is pacifist incrementalism and opposition to the use of force dressed up as reason. The moderate Left could not oppose going into Afghanistan and was actually pretty muted prior to Iraq. Elected Democrats feared, rightly, that running hard Left would be an electoral disaster. It didn't find its voice until after taking a beating in the 2002 elections followed by the ascension Howard Dean. Still, it has to be in favor of 'something' in the war on terror, so Afghanistan is the convenient position for the Left to say, "See, we favor the war on terror too, just not in Iraq." The fall back moderate Left position is, "Instead of spending all this money making unnecessary war, how can we make these people like us?" I have no clue, and so far, all I've heard from Publius et al is the rhetorical question. I'd like to hear the plan for making Al Quaeda like us.

Back to work.

Aren't you implying, though, that violence is the best or only way to combat "Islamic" values?

Don't even think of putting words in my mouth, directly or by convenient implication. "Islamic" values are fine if those who comply to them do so voluntarily and no basic human rights are violated; the Islamist version is not fine. Example: A woman voluntarily wearing a burka because she is devout to her religion is fine; a woman wearing a burka because the alternative is gang rape or stoning, is not fine.

If you are not advocating violence against moslem peoples, what are you advocating?

Wow, nice way to spin the argument without actually accusing me of making it. However, there is a small kernel of good in there, and my response to it is thus:

A non-violent solution to the current issues in the Middle East would be wonderful. Unfortunately, since the radicals have been given a lot of time (and sometimes, overt support from both East and West) to set up shop in governments and other places of influence, and since the oil issue is an inextricable variable in the arithmetic, it would be night impossible to deal with enough radicals to make a difference, except perhaps by shaking up the Middle East at a strategically central point. If the response to the shaking is that people build and maintain fledgling instutions of the kind associated with sustaining freedom long-term, things may calm down for a while.

Obviously, we are not going to go on the wagon and cover our ladies with veils to please some traditionalists in another culture. The issue is not what we are but how we are preceived.

No, that's not the issue, except perhaps to the narrow-minded. Instead of observing that perception and action are correllated, why not examine the causation independently? Specifically, a particular set of perceptions does not automatically lead to a particular set of actions, unless the frame of reference for those perceptions denies the perceiver any access to an alternative. For example, suppose some Westerner reading this forum perceived that your point of view was stupid. Would s/he be most likely to:

(a) respond civily in a free and open exchange of ideas;
(b) respond uncivily and even hostily, but eventually become distracted by something else; or
(c) institute a terrorism campaign in your city?

I think we both know why (c) is very rare in the West: people have the freedom to openly create ideas, express and debate ideas, search and research ideas, implement ideas, associate and mingle with people of differing ideas -- and failing all that, a reasonably uniform rule of law ensures that the fringe elements who inflict ideas through violent force are sifted out and punished.

It's not like the West is perceived with universal adoration and favor in the West itself. The difference is, those who find reason for disfavor here, have reasonable social, political, and legal outlets for attempting to change opinion and policy.

Hence, the fact that a society elsewhere should show an above-average tendency to produce terrorists, never mind the claimed grievance, is better understood as a commentary on the social, political, and legal conditions in that society.

America is home to the world's greatest marketing experts. In the commercial sphere, they are truly brilliant -- creative, original and effective. When it comes to foreign affairs, however, we as a nation seem prone to fits of mental retardation.

...since Twin Pillars if not before. Unfortunately, the world we live in now has been irreversibly molded by the results of such policy decisions, and that is the world we have to live in and live with -- not the idealized one in which two men merely had a tiff in the bar, and all they need to do is sober up and apologize.

Mckinneytexas writes:

>>>The point I am making, Cobra, is that terrorism directed at the US started outright in 1993."

That's just NOT FACTUALLY TRUE. Apparently it pains you to look somewhere other than the Clinton administration, but this let's deal with the TRUTH:

>>>Iran is responsible for the 1983 suicide bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 241 American servicemen, a U.S. District Court judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said the suicide truck bombing was carried out by the group Hezbollah with the approval and funding of Iran's senior government officials.

Lamberth ordered that the plaintiffs in the case -- the servicemen wounded in that bombing and the families of those killed -- have a "right to obtain judicial relief" from Iran. The judge called the October 23, 1983 bombing "the most deadly state-sponsored terrorist attack made against United States citizens before September 11, 2001."
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/05/30/iran.barracks.bombing/

Now, you may not be a big believer in CALENDARS, but this incident occured TEN YEARS before your claim that US directed terrorism started outright in 1993.
Those who so ardently support this war should look at recent information about the US government preparing to "cut it's forces in half" in Iraq by next year's Elections.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0711/dailyUpdate.html
How does this conflate with what Bush has argued?

>>>Bush said it is imperative that the United States and its allies wage an offensive war to hunt down terrorists before they strike again. "These kind of people who blow up subways and buses are not people you can negotiate with, or reason with, or appease," Bush said. The president said the U.S. military operation in Iraq is central to defeating these terrorists: "The terrorists fight in Iraq because they know that the survival of their hateful, hateful ideology is at stake.""
--http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071101331.html
Waitiminute...we have an insurgency that by all millitary commanders in the field is not diminishing at all, by some accounts GROWING, Bush says the Iraq operation is "central to defeating terrorists", but we have plans to cut our forces in HALF before the 2006 Elections?

Mckinney, you put your faith in THIS strategy?

--Cobra

Cobra, a valid but distinguishable point. There were actually several non-Al Quaeda acts of terrorism against the US prior to 1993 (Lebanon, Pan Am, the disco bombing in Germanny, all by disparate and unrelated actors, two by Libyian agents and one by Hammas). 1993 is the beginning of the Al Quaeda instigated war on terror, where the declared target is the US. So, I stand corrected. The larger points remain and remain unanswered.

As for strategy, tell me what strategy the Left has to offer and how it will be successful.

anony-mouse--good post, as usual.

Cheers!

And good luck with the snake charming. I mostly gave up some time ago; the willful denseness of the target subject made it too tempting to use the flute as a blunt instrument rather than a musical one.

A non-violent solution to the current issues in the Middle East would be wonderful. Unfortunately, since the radicals have been given a lot of time (and sometimes, overt support from both East and West) to set up shop in governments and other places of influence, and since the oil issue is an inextricable variable in the arithmetic, it would be night impossible to deal with enough radicals to make a difference, except perhaps by shaking up the Middle East at a strategically central point. If the response to the shaking flag is that people build and maintain fledgling instutions of the kind associated with sustaining freedom long-term, things may calm down for a while.

Cobra,

So some say the insurgency in Iraq is growing. So what? The objective of a stable democratic Iraq must be, and will be, achieved no matter how long it takes. It is the Iraqi government's job to suppress the insurgency, and given time they will. Our job is to give them time by crushing any major opposing force. It's a whack-a-mole strategy. We will keep hitting them as long as they keep popping up. The key is position. We will stay close, alert, with the hammer poised.

Mckinney writes:

>>>As for strategy, tell me what strategy the Left has to offer and how it will be successful."

Well, first off, I don't represent the "left." I represent myself. If you ask me, we're in a huge fix because we've allowed corporate greed, and fiscal irresponsibility to dictate our domestic and foreign policies to the point where we're addicted to Saudi Oil (homebase of wahabist terror), Chinese labor (most populous communist nation in history)and debt (China owns $700 BILLION in our treasury notes.)
We foment hatred against us based upon our actions in the world. If you think that's simply "blame America" rhetoric, think about the last time Switzerland was singled out in a fatwa. That neutral country, unlike America, doesn't have thousands of mostly Christian soldiers and mercenary contractors out fulfilling Osama Bin Laden's prophecies by occupying Muslim countries, and exploiting their oil. The Swiss, don't have imperialistic middle east domination agendas as outlined by neo-cons in the Project for the New American Century. The Swiss aren't adept at abusing Muslims in prison camps like Abu Ghraib.
http://www.thecobraslair.com/National%20Issues2.html
The Swiss haven't been involved in a war since the 16th Century. They are NEUTRAL. They concentrate on taking care of their citizens, securing their borders and maintaining a homeland security level where EVERY MALE citizen is REQUIRED to own a firearm.
A little more neutrality is in order in America's case, IMHO. That, and a REAL energy conservation formula that involves CAFE standards and alternative fuels as a mandated GOAL, and not fanciful rhetoric so our future Presidents aren't holding hands with brutal dictators from OPEC.
http://www.thecobraslair.com/National%20Issues6.html
If we aren't dependant upon brutal dictators for our energy, we won't be in a position where the people under the boot of those dictators look upon us as conspirators.
The alternative is a policy, similiar to the one embraced now, where we talk about freedom and democracy on camera, while winking and nodding at sultans off.

If anony-mouse thinks I'm being "willfully dense" by pointing out our nation's hypocrisy in dealing with the middle east, so be it. I'm more concerned about the targets on the backs of our troops, sitting in a 119 degree meat-grinder--part of a nation-building attempt at uniting three distinct rival ethnic groups that have never gotten along to form a democracy that never existed before.

--Cobra

*sigh*...troll-baiting just isn't so fun as it used to be. These days it is more like grenade fishing -- you tend to get hits every time without really putting much effort into it.

Ok, Cobra, you win. You're right, I'm wrong. The Swiss model is perfect--they did a hell of a job on the Nazis and single-handedly rolled back the Soviet Union, liberating Eastern Europe. Pardon my denseness.

Cobra,

We're not Switzerland. We have considerable power and we use it in our own interest - and many in the world hate us for that reason. Your solution basically comes down to, "hey, let's stop using our power". Its not going to happen. We have too much to lose.

The use of power doesn't bother me. If it really bothers you, if the benefits of power do not outweight your moral concerns, then I suggest to you that there are plenty of non-powerful places in the world you could choose to live. Don't get me wrong - I'm not one of those "love it or leave" it folks. If you want to live here and whine that's your right - and I have fought to protect that right. I'm just saying that the world isn't going to change to suit you.

Mckinney writes:

>>>Ok, Cobra, you win. You're right, I'm wrong. The Swiss model is perfect--they did a hell of a job on the Nazis and single-handedly rolled back the Soviet Union, liberating Eastern Europe. Pardon my denseness."

Like I said, the Swiss are neutral. I hope you recall the isolationist stance of the US while Nazi Germany was running roughshod through Europe during the first years of WW2. America didn't get in the war until we were attacked at Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941, and sat on the sidelines for 10 years while the Japanese slaughtered Chinese at a greater clip than the Holocaust.
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.12.96/cover/china1-9650.html

So maybe there should be just a little perspective when comparing Swiss neutrality to America's selective indifference.

Randy writes:

>>>We're not Switzerland. We have considerable power and we use it in our own interest - and many in the world hate us for that reason. Your solution basically comes down to, "hey, let's stop using our power". Its not going to happen. We have too much to lose."

I'm not against using America's millitary power for the best interests of the American people. I am against using our millitary power for the best interest of corporations and imperialistic zealotry.
Surely we can agree there is a distinction between the two.

--Cobra

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