 There has been a lot of pleading
lately, from people across the political spectrum, for Democrats and
liberals to 'develop a real policy to deal with terrorism'. In the
absence of this, the argument goes, every terrorist act plays into the
hands of the Republicans and the neocons, giving them 'I told you so'
justification for their 'anti-terrorist' actions (at least in the minds
of the 50% of Americans who still buy the Bush con that unilaterally
attacking Iraq had something to do with fighting terrorism). And in
such an atmosphere, irresponsible idiots like Tommy Franks are advising
terrorists that if they want to turn the US into a paranoid police
state, the answer is simple: just pay one wacko in the US to detonate
one dirty bomb anywhere in the country.
If the Bush regime is struggling next year to get re-elected, the best
shot in the arm they could get would be more terrorism. In fact the
Republicans now are almost fully invested (politically, and, with
taxpayer money, financially) in the exaggerated and inept "war on
terrorism". No wonder, then, that the bozo 'president' says "bring it
on".
The point he's missing, which most of the mainstream media are too lazy
to bring up, and which the Democrats are either too timid or too
disorganized to articulate, is that in
a free country in the 21st century there is no defense against
terrorism. The laughably inadequate, ill-thought out
Bush-Ashcroft 'security measures' are a complete joke, easily
circumvented by a terrorist group with even a small modicum of
intelligence. I can think of half a dozen terrorist acts that would put
Tommy Franks' ideas to shame, and probably cost less, and which all the
security measures implemented and promised in future freedom-erasing
Patriot Acts don't even begin to address. But unlike Franks, I'm not
about to sell them to a magazine for terrorists to read. The
concentration of power in the West automatically brings with it
enormous vulnerabilities (as the incompetents in the Ohio power
industry demonstrated clearly to twenty million of us in two countries
last summer).
Quite simply: If someone wants to kill three thousand or three million
Americans, in spectacular fashion, they can and will find a way to do
it, any time they damn well please. The technology is available and
inexpensive and all the 'security measures' in the world cannot stop
it. It is simply naive wishful thinking to believe otherwise. This is
what conservatives, fueled into a rage by 9/11 and armed with the
muddle-headed thinking of 'eye for an eye' religious teachings that
simply don't work in a modern, global society, can't and won't accept.
Cowboy analogies just don't apply any more: Just because the answer to
armed desperados in the Old West was a strong police and military
presence and every citizen armed to the teeth, doesn't mean the answer
to armed terrorists in the New West (terrorists armed largely with
technologies we sold to them, or which they stole from us) is an
endless, bankrupting, freedom-sacrificing series of wars, overseen by a
police state with Orwellian surveillance of everything and everyone and
Star Wars and mini-nukes to 'out-gun' the bad guys. But this is exactly
what Bush and the neocons are prepared to turn the West into, and
they're furious with 'treasonous' individuals and countries that don't
share their zeal.
Yes, the Democrats and liberals do need a policy to deal with
terrorism. If we don't have one, any major terrorist act in 2004
guarantees a Bush re-election. But our policy needs to recognize that
terrorism is a reaction, not
an action. People who attack the West, and Western forces, ideas and
institutions are reacting to our actions and ideas that to them
are absolutely abhorrent -- the invasion of their countries,
militarily, culturally, and economically, by Western troops, moral
depravity, crass consumerism, spiritual sacrilege, and the power of
money over man. It's not our 'freedom' that they hate, it's the
imposition of Western culture that overwhelms them in their own countries and
threatens everything they believe in. They don't really care what
Americans do in their own country, which is the real reason so few terrorist acts
are carried out on American soil.
There is no defense against
terrorism, but there is a viable policy to deal with it. Problem is,
it's a hot potato: no one really wants to adopt it, because it looks
weak and it costs a lot. That policy is to stop attacking countries
that don't espouse Western values, and leave them to evolve in their
own way at their own rate. That policy is to invest the billions that
the US is now spending on arms, to instead provide those countries with
humanitarian aid -- money and supplies for education,
infrastructure-building, medicines, and civilian technologies and
training in how to use them. No strings attached except that we need to
be able to audit to ensure the money and technologies are used for
their intended purposes. Nothing to be paid back. In fact, for
countries whose foreign debt to us is crushing them, making them
economic slaves to us, we need to write that debt off. Goodwill is the
only dividend we need.
If we did this, there would be nothing for terrorists to react to. And
while there will always be a few deranged minds in the world who will
blow up government buildings and commit other dreadful acts, and while
under the auspices of the UN we may still need to intervene together to
deal with leaders who inflict genocide or other massive cruelty on
their own people or their neighbours, for the most part such a policy
of incessant investment in nation-building will inevitably produce a
world that is more peaceful, less harsh, and yes, safer and more secure
for all of us than the one we live in today.
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1:10:42 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
