Beating Terrorism: It's the Grievances, Stupid

[ProSense]

Beating Terrorism: It's the Grievances, Stupid

By Steve Clemons | bio

Snip…

Bolton -- as one of the leading forces of revived Jesse Helms-ian pugnacious, flip-off-the-world nationalism -- and Gedmin as one of the most capable and intelligent, if not the best known, neoconservatives, was too toxic a combination to inflict on the collective pool of envoys from the world's roster of nations.

Snip...

In Jeffrey Gedmin's "The Lessons from London's Terror Plot and Lebanon," he makes a fundamental mistake in prescriptions against terrorism and sets up a false argument. He starts by dispelling the notion that the Bush administration "is to blame for terrorism." Of course, he is right. There have been terrorist incidents for decades back. In fact, terrorism has always been a device of war, a tactic that groups have used against established power centers.

The issue that Gedmin fails to wrestle with is one that Donald Rumsfeld tried to on one occasion. Why has the Bush administration's policy failed on all levels to ameliorate al Qaeda style terrorism -- and why in the military response the administration has pursued should it not be held to account for igniting wide-spread, sectarian civil war in Iraq -- which threatens to expand through the region?

Snip…

Gedmin asserts that there is ample evidence that American foreign policy efforts that had nothing to do with either oil or Israel nonetheless produced no diminishment in the determination of Islamic terrorists to cause harm. He is right to a point, but he is not being serious if he thinks that American efforts in Bosnia or Somalia were designed in any way to respond to broad Muslim grievances.

Snip...

But to suggest that the way forward is an escalation in the military response -- while not robbing the "grievance agenda" from the ruthless thugs that are driving terrorist organizations -- helps empower terrorists.

That's right -- when Joe Lieberman, Vice President Cheney, and Sean Hannity are out there suggesting that a vote for Ned Lamont helps support terrorists -- they have it backwards.

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http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/aug/14/beating_terrorism_its_the_grievances_stupid