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motherwell's excellent post, but it was getting kind of long, so instead of dumping a whole big thing in his journal, I htought I'd post it here.
I think that western leftists often get wrapped around the axle of blaming western governments for the deeds of others partly because they want their own nations to accept and atone for the wrongs that we've done. Of course, two wrongs don't make a right; my doing something evil to someone else doesn't justify their doing something evil back.
It does, however often *explain* why people do things. And this, I think, is where well-meaning people (as well as people with an agenda*) often lose the thread.
To take the case of the Palestinians, Israel--with the knowing and explicit support of the US and some other western nations--has behaved in a barbarous way as a brutal occupier in Palestine. Israel has had its reasons for this, and the US has had its reasons for supporting Israel.
None of that justifies the use of bombs and missiles against civilians (unless you really subscribe to the beyond-the-pale belief that anyone who isn't actively struggling against your enemy is aiding him--one idea that radical terrorists and our president seem to agree on). But it does explain why many Palestinians would feel they have nothing to lose by resorting to violence, even the sort of arbitrary, senseless violence that is wholly unjustified and loses them support in the world community.
And there certainly are people trying to employ tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience** in Israel and the Occupied Territories and in other countries (see the case of Rachel Corrie, who was killed trying to act as a human shield for a Palestinian house in Rafah). But such tactics have not produced very good returns, for a variety of reasons.
There's no particular reason to think al Qaida gives a damn about the Palestinians, other than as a casus belli and a recruiting tool to draw get more footsoldiers to fight their own private war against the secular, the modern, and the moderate. In this they are like many of the governments of Middle Eastern countries, which have made a lot of noise about the plight of the Palestinians without doing much to make their lives better.
But as long as AQ can convincingly claim to care about injustice to Muslims, and as long as there really is a grievous injustice being perpetrated with the acquiesence and support of the West, AQ will continue to get recruits. So it behooves the West to try to be alert to and work on solving some of these long-standing injustices; not because AQ cares, but because ordinary Muslims care and feel that AQ offers a solution. Let's make sure there is a better solution, and all the AQ recruiting speeches in the world won't get them any volunteers.
* The other reason that some liberals are happy to castigate the West for its sins is that, of course, the people responsible for those sins, or their modern-day successors--national security and military forces, major corporations, moneyed conservative elites--are the people and institutions that those liberals are struggling against in other venues.
**I think it's painting with a rather broad brush to say that NVCD turned the tide in the RSA or in the USSR, and its successes in some of the former Soviet and WTO countries have been matched by failures elsewhere. NVCD has achieved very little in Tibet or China; sadly, we've seen how little it achieved in Uzbekistan; and the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe seems so far resistant to peaceful protest (and democratic elections).
motherwell's excellent post, but it was getting kind of long, so instead of dumping a whole big thing in his journal, I htought I'd post it here.I think that western leftists often get wrapped around the axle of blaming western governments for the deeds of others partly because they want their own nations to accept and atone for the wrongs that we've done. Of course, two wrongs don't make a right; my doing something evil to someone else doesn't justify their doing something evil back.
It does, however often *explain* why people do things. And this, I think, is where well-meaning people (as well as people with an agenda*) often lose the thread.
To take the case of the Palestinians, Israel--with the knowing and explicit support of the US and some other western nations--has behaved in a barbarous way as a brutal occupier in Palestine. Israel has had its reasons for this, and the US has had its reasons for supporting Israel.
None of that justifies the use of bombs and missiles against civilians (unless you really subscribe to the beyond-the-pale belief that anyone who isn't actively struggling against your enemy is aiding him--one idea that radical terrorists and our president seem to agree on). But it does explain why many Palestinians would feel they have nothing to lose by resorting to violence, even the sort of arbitrary, senseless violence that is wholly unjustified and loses them support in the world community.
And there certainly are people trying to employ tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience** in Israel and the Occupied Territories and in other countries (see the case of Rachel Corrie, who was killed trying to act as a human shield for a Palestinian house in Rafah). But such tactics have not produced very good returns, for a variety of reasons.
There's no particular reason to think al Qaida gives a damn about the Palestinians, other than as a casus belli and a recruiting tool to draw get more footsoldiers to fight their own private war against the secular, the modern, and the moderate. In this they are like many of the governments of Middle Eastern countries, which have made a lot of noise about the plight of the Palestinians without doing much to make their lives better.
But as long as AQ can convincingly claim to care about injustice to Muslims, and as long as there really is a grievous injustice being perpetrated with the acquiesence and support of the West, AQ will continue to get recruits. So it behooves the West to try to be alert to and work on solving some of these long-standing injustices; not because AQ cares, but because ordinary Muslims care and feel that AQ offers a solution. Let's make sure there is a better solution, and all the AQ recruiting speeches in the world won't get them any volunteers.
* The other reason that some liberals are happy to castigate the West for its sins is that, of course, the people responsible for those sins, or their modern-day successors--national security and military forces, major corporations, moneyed conservative elites--are the people and institutions that those liberals are struggling against in other venues.
**I think it's painting with a rather broad brush to say that NVCD turned the tide in the RSA or in the USSR, and its successes in some of the former Soviet and WTO countries have been matched by failures elsewhere. NVCD has achieved very little in Tibet or China; sadly, we've seen how little it achieved in Uzbekistan; and the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe seems so far resistant to peaceful protest (and democratic elections).
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-22 02:48 am (UTC)I may be missing something, but as I see it, Israel's "use of bombs and missiles against civilians" results from the fact that the militants they're targeting have hidden themselves among said civilians, knowing full well that they will be targeted, and also knowing the inevitable consequences. As the other Jan repeatedly said, the Palestinian militants knowingly target Israeli civilians, and the IDF then target the militants as they hide among their own civilians.
If we want to "understand" why certain people are trying to kill us, we must distinguish between an atrocity of ours that is a "reason" for retaliation, and one that is merely an "excuse." The overthrow of the Shah was a reasonable response to his brutal regime. Once he was out, he became no more than an excuse for his successors to take US hostages and blame us for all of the domestic problems they weren't competent enough to address themselves (which, I hear, some of those mullahs are still doing).
Just because AQ says that 9/11 is a response to this or that US action, does not mean that's really why those people chose terrorism over, say, political opposition in their home countries, helping the poor, or any of a wide range of things they could have chosen to do instead.
In the midst of all this hand-wringing (like about forty-odd years of it and counting) about US atrocities, our media and intelligentsia have given rather short shrift to the evils done by the governments of the terrorists' home countries. Could they be scapegoating "Crusaders and Jews" for evils they can't -- or won't -- fight at home, as the Nazis scapegoated the Jews?
Understanding our enemies' motives does not mean condoning their actions, or letting their blame-games and rationalizations go unchallenged.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-22 03:53 am (UTC)Understanding does not mean condoning, I agree. Voltaire was wrong, I think, or meant something rather different, when he said "To understand all is to forgive all."
And terrorists (whether state terrorists like Saddam or Milosevic or nonstate actors like AQ or Hamas or the IRA or the Viet Minh/Viet Cong) are often happy to use civilians as shields because it's a win-win propostion for them: either they escape without damage, or their enemy kills harmless noncombatants.
But what I think is lost in some of the knee-jerk criticisms of "root cause" (by which I do not mean yours, but some others I have seen) is that they seek to absolve US/European governments of the need to address real problems by saying "Oh, the terrorists don't care about the people they claim they are fighting for". It may be true that the terrorist leaders don't care, but that's hardly the point. They are able to motivate people to aid them, whether it be with money, supplies, shelter, or bodies, because they can manipulate *real*, actual, serious injustices, and peoples' reactions to them. To take Mao's metaphor of the guerilla as a fish that swims in the sea of the people, we will never get rid of the terrorists until we rob them of their lifeblood: arms, money, volunteers. Do we do that by bombing more villages in Iraq and Afghanistan? We've been doing that for going on 4 years now, and it isn't helping.
We need to eliminate their recruiting icons, their issues.
For 50 years, we ahve contenanced anything that Israel chose to do to preserve "stabilty." Yes, PLO and Hamas fighters have used civilians as human shields. But the IDF and the Israeli intelligence services are have been just as unrelenting and just as ruthless in their pursuiit of their enemies. The IDF chose to kill a senior Hamas leader by using a fighter bomber to take out an entire tower block, with dozens of familes living in it, instead of risking a commando raid to assassinate the guy. That's not the act of a responsible government that's trying to avoid civilian casualties.
Ariel Sharon *created* the second intifada by leading hundreds of Israeli policemen onto the Haram al Sharif when he knew it would spark riots and bloodshed, and for no reason other than to show that he could. The same man authorized the massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon in 1982 and led terror raids into Jordan in the 1950s to scare Palestinians away from the border by killing women and children. Yes, Yasser Arafat was an evil, corrupt terrorist leader who did more harm than good to his people; so is Sharon, yet the US chose to recognize and laud one and condemn and refuse to negotiate with the other. That's a double-standard that the whole world can see plainly.
We need to stop that, and we need to stop supporting evil-minded dictatorships (now: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Egypt; then: Iran, Indonesia, South Vietnam, Philipines, Zaire, South Africa, Rhodesia, name any Latin American country you like) while trumpeting our ideals of democracy and justice. If we don't practice what we preach, it's obvious to everyone except ourselves.
Hi, I'm still here...
Date: 2005-07-24 06:46 pm (UTC)It may be true that the terrorist leaders don't care, but that's hardly the point.
Actually, that's the most important point the struggle against terrorism can make, and MUST make. No one elected any of these militants, no government appointed them (not explicitly at least), no one can fire or impeach them, and they thrive and function precisely by making themselves completely uncontrollable and unaccountable to anyone. Thus they have no incentive whatsoever to show any of the restraint that even the most undemocratic state is required to show. This is why terrorism, as a tactic for political change, is a threat to civil society in general, and must be crushed regardless of what they say they're fighting for.
As for "eliminating their recruiting icons," one of their biggest "recruiting icons" is the fact that many people in various parts of the world can be counted on to make excuses for their actions, and to see, and perhaps even accept, them as legitimate or semi-legitimate players in world politics. Some governments promise to support them, or at least condone them, provided they just do their thing elsewhere; some individuals or interest groups take up their demands, blame others for not "understanding" them, and sometimes even romanticize them as "freedom fighters" rather than as violent criminals; and others, ignorant of facts on the ground, allow themselves to be manipulated into accepting them as "representative" of "their" people, whose real needs or feelings they don't understand. And of course, there are those on the insufferable-nihilistic-spoiled-brat left who blindly and lazily insist that all forms of violence are equally illegitimate, and therefore equally legitimate. All of these tendencies (many of them adopted as the path of least short-term political or military resistance) must be resisted and discredited if terrorism is to be neutralized.
We must do what is right for US interests and the world in general; but we CANNOT afford to give even the merest impression that we're doing any of it in response to terrorists' demands. If what AQ wants happens to be, in fact, the right thing for us to do, then we must do it -- ideally after we crush them flat or otherwise prove that they can't influence our policies. The mere hint that terrorism can influence any nation's policies, will embolden terrorists of all persuasions, and subject more innocent people to more undisciplined violence in the near future.
Take, as one example, your point about our presence in Saudi Arabia. If we decide there's no more need to have military bases there, then of course, said bases should be removed. But we CANNOT do this in response to a well-heeled terrorist who claims to represent the feelings and demands of a nation that booted him off its turf years ago. Nor can we take seriously his pretension to represent the demands of Muslims in general, after he was clearly forced to reside on the outermost fringes of the Muslim world.
As for Sharon vs. Arafat, I agree there's blood on both parties' hands. But I will add that, as I understand it at least, the latest intifada was caused, at least in part, by Arafat's refusal to accept a peace deal that would have given the Palestinians about 90% of the land currently occupied by Israel. The government of Israel had an incentive to make concessions; the terrorists who claim to represent the interests of the Palestinians did not.
Re: Hi, I'm still here...
Date: 2005-07-25 04:34 am (UTC)I really don't think so. The people who are being recruited to work for AQ don't give a damn about the people who are trying to understand or excuse AQ and it's POV. In many cases, I don't think those voices are even heard in the radical Muslim millieu. After all, the last thing any of the radicals want is to let their followers get the impression that people in the West are reasonable, sane people who can be negotiated with.
No, the biggest influence radical recruiting from the West, IMO, are the tens of thousands of Western soldiers occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and based in Saudi Arabia, Pakisatan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikstan, Turkey, the Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain...
And I disagree that we have to wait until we've crushed AQ to act on any of the injustices they claim to be fighting against. That kind of rigidity will play right into their hands. Because we are never going to crush them. If history has taught us anything, its that terrorist movements simply cannot be crushed. They can be held in check, with the right combination of intelligence and action, maybe pushed off balance, but unless they are starved of support, they will keep recruiting and keep getting money and arms and eventually they will win. The *best* we can hope is to use dialogue and diplomacy with the Muslim world, both with state actors and with nonstate actors, to make the terrorists irrelevant. And that has to be done by addressing the reasons that people are willing to fight for them to begin with.
As for Sharon vs. Arafat, I agree there's blood on both parties' hands. But I will add that, as I understand it at least, the latest intifada was caused, at least in part, by Arafat's refusal to accept a peace deal that would have given the Palestinians about 90% of the land currently occupied by Israel. The government of Israel had an incentive to make concessions; the terrorists who claim to represent the interests of the Palestinians did not.
Ah, Israel. The best propaganda machine of any single state in the world, IMO.
First of all, what the Israelis offered at the Barak-Clinton-Arafat meeting was a deal calculated to be unacceptable to the Palestinians. Palestine would have been divided into bits by military roads, fences, walls, checkpoints, with five IDF bases still inside it, with no free access to the sea or to land borders or to airspace or even to the water in the ground. Parts of the Occupied Territories would be annexed so that Israel could retain its illegal settlements, and the Palestinians were offered part of the Negev Desert as compensation.
Israel had no incentive to make concessions, and Barak engineered an "offer" that won Israel points for magnanimity (because no one in the geenral populace ever looked very hard at the details) which was totally safe, because there was no way the Palestinians would ever accept it.
Clinton came up with an alternative plan (which gave the Israelis almost as much of pre-1949 Palestine, but removed all the militray bases and roads, making a single contiguous West Bank area) and tried to push Barak into proposing it. The Palestinians accepted it as the basis for further negotiations, at which point Barak broke off talks (presumably for fear that an actual settlement might be reached).
Re: Hi, I'm still here...
Date: 2005-07-25 04:35 am (UTC)Second, why do we find it acceptable that Israel feels it has the right to decide what to offer or what not to offer? In 1948 and again in 1967, Israel occupied land that did not belong to it and has settled people on it and driven Arabs off it for 50 years. Nowhere else, that I'm aware of, has the US government tolerated this sort of behavior by someone we claimed as an ally and whose economy and military we practically support single-handed. Where else have we even countenanced a modern nation seizing the territory of another? Tibet is the only case I can think of. We (claimed we) went to war with Iraq in 1991 because they seized Kuwait. We took nearly 170,000 casualties in Korea in order to prevent North Korea from occupying the South. We took over 200,000 casualties in Vietnam in a failed attempt to do the same there. But Israel simply annexes an entire state and we send them arms and host their leaders at the White House.