I tend not to be a fan of things that divide people. A friend and I were talking this week, and he said to me that the solution to the war on terrorism and the “whole Middle East thing” is to put up a big wall between us and them. Well, there’s a thought, sounds fun, hey? My response is that it’s a misconception to think that there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ in this war. It’s a ‘war on terror’, literally on the emotion and not against any particular ‘them’. We have a general idea who we mean to fight but that’s about as far as we’ve gotten because the other side hasn’t declared themselves. They don’t intend to either.
Did you know that the first US aircraft to be hijacked by a terrorist was way back in 1961? And do you know what the outcome was? The man who hijacked the plane to fly to Cuba was given asylum there.* I’m pretty sure he was singing: “at the Copa, Copacabana…the hottest spot north of Havana” by that stage. And we wonder why the terrorists have the idea it just might work.
Since September 11 there have been 12 separate, significant terrorist attacks against Western targets outside of Iraq. Is anybody winning yet? How could you tell?
Terrorism is unlikely to stop since it has been around for so long, and it changes form. We are fighting a Hydra – every time you cut off a head another one arises to take its place. It has existed for as long as there has been conflict. Kidnapping can be terrorism, on a micro-scale, and guerrilla warfare is terrorism only without such a catchy title. The largest scale terrorist attack in America, before 9/11, was the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Was that someone you could wall off?
You can’t fight all terrorism, or all terrorists at once because we’re not talking about a unified body, let alone mind. Do you think Timothy McVeigh ever had much in common with Osama bin Laden? I’d say it’s fairly unlikely given that McVeigh was a white, Catholic, gun-totting Republican. So why then do we insist on lumping them into the same mental category?
To engage an enemy, as any soldier can tell you, is to get into their mind and to out-think them. That’s how battles and wars are won, on the ability to strategise in advance and it’s impossible to do that in this case. We can win individual skirmishes but it’s hard to outfox people all the time when often you simply can’t know who is plotting against you until after the fact. People try though and that’s usually called something else: paranoia.
The prevailing trend in US foreign policy towards starting ‘wars’ with no particular human enemy began long before September 11, 2001. Like the ‘war on drugs’ which one could say finds its modern roots as far back as Prohibition, and genuinely now is guerrilla warfare:
“Attempting to stamp out the supply of drugs is like pushing on a balloon— cut off production in one country and another quickly fills the void. Colombia, for instance, produced no heroin 15 years ago. Now the country is the leading supplier to the United States, having replaced Mexico, Turkey, Southeast Asia, and Southwest Asia, each of which was a major source of heroin at one time or another.”
You see, right there it’s the same thing – a hydra. You can spot the roots of foreign policy in domestic issues, and in the pull of social changes that give rise to conflicting beliefs. The trouble is that somewhere along the way someone made the decision that micromanaging macro problems was a good plan.
Wars against emotion can never be won. How do you fight fear? You don’t fight it with guns but with rational thought, clarity of purpose, and acceptance of more than one idea.
Pluralism is a notion full of wonder and potential, and it is also the bedrock upon which Western democracy is founded. If you’re worried about your civil liberties, if you’re worried about terrorism, or what God or Allah or Yahweh thinks about all this then keep allowing your mind and your children’s minds to view things from different perspectives. You need not accept those other ideas as right but accepting that they are there at all is a great thing. It’s safe to say that the terrorists, whomever they may be, lost that particular ability a long time ago and that has made them into the monsters we fear in the dark.
*See the full list of significant terrorist incidents from 1961-2003.
Would you remember when 9/11 happened? These ‘average’ Americans didn’t:
Very deep, very well thought out post. The last paragraph says it all. Great post, keep writing.
This is a great post. I find myself in a world of ignorance here in America and it is so sad to see those people know nothing about 9-11. People are so easily manipulated by the media & fear. I believe terrorism is absolutely real but has been blown way out of proportion, and that fear is used by world leaders to manipulate the masses – while they all sit down watching American Idol and other forms of mind numbing entertainment. I am personally unafraid of terrorism, but I am afraid of the coming totalitarian police state owned and operated by the greed infested manipulators who so easily control America.
There’s wisdom in what you’re saying, Bobby. Fear those who have power right now, not those who simply want it… the world would be a better place if folks payed a bit more attention to what those who lead us are doing right this minute, rather than possible futures. It’s fine to fear what’s possible but not if you pay a heavy price in reality.
Two words for ya: Berlin. Wall.
Barriers bad, segregation bad, isolation bad.
History can be a great teacher if we listen, and provides massive-world lessons that also have distinct relevance to my-world situations.
~Shiv