Rattling the Cage: Terrorism, theirs and ours

[kayecy]

Rattling the Cage: Terrorism, theirs and ours - LARRY DERFNER - Jerusalem Post, March 12th 2008


"Israel's unofficial policy of hitting Lebanese civilians so they'll constrain Hizbullah from attacking Israel seems to have paid off. But Israel's siege of Gaza, based on the same strategy, has backfired. It led Gazans to break through the border to Egypt, where the terrorists among them were able to bring back much more weaponry. It also left the Hamas leadership bolder and more popular than ever.

All we need now is to start firing artillery shells on Gaza's neighborhoods.

LET'S ADMIT it: Sometimes the targeting of civilians in war - i.e. terrorism - works. If it didn't, it wouldn't be as popular as it's been for so long. Let's also admit that we civilized people all support terrorism, or will at least give serious thought to targeting civilians in war, if we believe it's in a just cause and will ultimately save lives. A word of reminder: Hiroshima"



http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1205261315892&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[kayecy]

1. At last.....A Jerusalem Post article that tells it as it is...... ... n/t

[subsuelo]

4. You just know the editor is hearing it for posting it

People abhor the truth

[Behind the Aegis]

2. What a load of shit.

Somebody doesn't know what terrorism is and isn't this will surely be used as a "broken clock" moment. :eyes: It is a sad day when "civilized people support terrorism."

[subsuelo]

5. Actually he defines it in the third paragraph

"Deliberately targeting civilians for a political purpose"

and in the fourth paragraph:

"punishing and killing civilians to force the enemy leadership's hand."

How is your definition different?

[Behind the Aegis]

9. Then he doesn't know how to apply it.

Clearly, some of his examples are not terrorism, though he'd like to think they are to meet his agenda.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Well...

yes, I agree that it is true that terrorism sometimes works, and that people in general 'support terrorism, or will at least give serious thought to targeting civilians in war, if we believe it's in a just cause and will ultimately save lives'.

However, with rare exceptions (occasionally war does result in fewer deaths than allowing a situation to continue), violence usually just breeds MORE violence, and there are more and more deaths, and nothing gained in the long run.

Re the 'civilized peoples' issue: I don't think that there are 'uncivilized peoples' who support terrorism and violence more than 'civilized' ones. However, I do think that it is a mark of the right wing everywhere to support terrorism and violence! There is nothing progressive about supporting Hamas, any more than about supporting any other right-wing war-mongering group.

[bemildred]

6. Human history is an uninterrupted litany of "terrorism" and exterminations.

What changes as you move along is the means applied and the scale of the crimes. That is why some favor international law and similar standards of conduct which the current crop of "leaders" so frequently find inexpedient. My opinion is that as long a people are allowed and encouraged to think of themselves as members of separate and competing groups, these things will continue. If you want that sort of thing to stop happening, then it must be forbidden to place anyone outside the protections of law and accountability.

[LeftishBrit]

7. In principle I agree, but when is this going to happen?

'My opinion is that as long a people are allowed and encouraged to think of themselves as members of separate and competing groups, these things will continue.'

Well, yes. But humans through history and probably pre-history have been inclined to 'think of themselves as members of separate and competing groups'. It's not really a matter of their being 'allowed' to do so; it seems to be one of the more negative sides of human nature. I am sufficient of a naive optimist to hope that we may be able to conquer this tendency, once we really accept that humans are one single group, not immortal, and that if we blow up our planet (or even just make it unlivably hot), that's it for us. But it's a tendency we've had forever, it seems.


'If you want that sort of thing to stop happening, then it must be forbidden to place anyone outside the protections of law and accountability.'

But who's going to do the forbidding? It seems to me that if we were in a position where this would be a serious possibility, we'd ALREADY have solved a lot of our problems as a species.

[bemildred]

10. Would now be OK?

Actually it's perfectly understandable, for several millions of years the primary biological threat to humans was other humans, so the attitude is rather bred into us. The problem is that governments tend to exploit this weakness to serve their own interests, instead of cooperating to mitigate it in the interests of the larger whole. That is, governments tend to view history as a zero sum game and their job as being to screw everyone else as best they can, so they "win". Like I said, it's sort of bred in.

I don't really have an answer, we need better humans, or perhaps I should say humans better adapted to the modern environment. As the Whole Earth Catalog says "We are as gods and might as well get good at it." Perhaps evolution will solve the problem for us again, if we don't kill ourselves first. Education firmly pursued for a generation or two might do the job, if done right, but it's hard to be sure.

Both evolutionary history and political history are pretty clear that nobody stays on top forever, the way the game is played now. So in the end everybody loses. Hobbes was right. If we don't like that, we will have to change our ways.

[azurnoir]

8. The eternal need to be "alpha" n/t

[bemildred]

11. Yeah, that's part of it.

You just can't have too many servants and concubines or too much stuff.