DIFFERENT VIEWS

Bob Morris links me over to this article by Patrick Seale on the roots of terrorism.

One strong possibility is that the “enemy” is not just a terrorist network but a broad, militant, grassroots rebellion against American military and political interventions in the Arab and Muslim world, against Western arrogance, racism and bullying.
For decades now, but especially under the Bush administration, America’s triumphalism, its contempt for the views and interests of others, its boastful displays of military power, its refusal to recognize and address the “roots of terror,” its apparent indifference to international law, its economic supremacy all these have created a worldwide backlash which has put Americans at risk in many countries. History suggests that any power which dominates others will inevitably create violent opposition to it. If this is true, then what we are witnessing is nothing less than an anti-imperialist movement of the 21st century.
Although often expressed in Islamic terms, the movement of rebellion is essentially political. It aims to liberate the Arab and Muslim world from the suffocating embrace of the West and above all from American neo-imperialism and its Zionist handmaiden. Future historians might well judge Osama bin Laden, for example, not as the outrageous pariah he now seems, but as only the latest in a long line of Islamic activists who include such well-known figures of the past as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Hassan al-Banna, Said Qutb, Musa Sadr, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and even Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Many separate streams feed the river of rebellion. There is no doubt that the epidemic of anti-American sentiment raging from Morocco to Indonesia is fed by American support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. This is the main spring of the rebellion. But there are many others. Israel’s repeated aggressions against Lebanon, as well as its 22-year occupation of the South supported by the US have bred an army of bitter opponents. The 12-year sanctions against Iraq the worst inflicted on any country in history have mobilized opinion powerfully against America and Britain, as has the obsessive threat of war against Baghdad repeated almost every time Bush or Prime Minister Tony Blair open their mouths.
Quite apart from its irresponsibility, there is something incomprehensible and irrational about America’s fixation with Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. As the distinguished American columnist William Pfaff wrote the other day, “There is, to the best of specialist opinion, no scenario by which the American public is threatened by nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of Iraqi origin.” In other words, there is no credible Iraqi threat to the United States. Why then is America making more enemies for itself? Is it because hard-line Zionists, anxious to ensure Israel”s regional supremacy, have captured American foreign policy? The well-founded suspicion that this is the case is yet another source of anti-US rage.

Well, while I see the world pretty damn differently from this author, I do agree that the actors are part of a more diffuse set of organizations than we are assuming, and that simply decapitating these organizations will not make the problems go away.
He and I part company here: Where to place the responsibility for resolving these issues? While I think that the US and the West have to reach out, it’s equally clear to me that the other side…the Muslim and developing world’s responsible actors…need to reach out as well. Why?
Because if there is no one on the other end of the phone, we in the West will do what it takes to protect ourselves.
I commented earlier:

I don’t want to be a part of a society that eradicated another culture; I don’t want to commit genocide.
I don’t want to be put in a position where genocide is either a reasonable option, or where my fellow citizens are so enraged that they are willing to commit it, and my opposition will be washed away in a tide of rage.
I want a calm, prosperous Middle East, and believe that the Palestinian Arabs who have been royally screwed by everyone…by the Europeans and Americans who established Israel without planning or compensation; by their leaders who have led them into several suicidal wars; by the leaders of the other Arab states who use them as cheap labor, exploit them economically, and exploit them politically…deserve decent lives.
They won’t get them following the path they are on.

Neither will the ‘enraged’ Arabs, who will simply add to the world’s toll of sorrow until we get tired enough of paying it.
That’s a sad truth.

4 thoughts on “DIFFERENT VIEWS”

  1. Just because terrorists and their organizations are part of a broader movement, doesn’t mean that smashing those organizations won’t make terrorists go away.
    To use a recent example, America rather effectively (with lots of collateral damage) smashed its Communist Party in the 1950s, even though that party was embedded in a wider socialistic movement in America. Those in favor of greater state control of the economy and redistribution of wealth didn’t go away, but as a movement, Communism in America was finished.
    We don’t know whether modern Arab terrorism is such a case (there are memorable movements that didn’t die when their militant branches were smashed), but we certainly shouldn’t dismiss the possibility.

  2. Organized terror movements must be fought vigorously. And we should not blame ourselves for their actions — nothing can justify a September 11th, or a Bali, or any other Qaeda massacre.
    That said, I think the author you quote, AL, has a good point: this really isn’t so much about Islam. It’s an anti-American/anti-imperialist movement that uses the language of Islam. But many of its methods are actually borrowed from radical Marxism. 40 or 50 years ago, it was the Marxists who were running guerilla wars and engaging in random terror bombings around the world.
    The PLO and the Iranian revolution seem to be the historical points when the methods of the violent (Western) left were absorbed into the Islamic world. Don’t forget, there was a lot of Arab Marxism at one time — in fact the Palestinians were much more Marxist than Islamist 30 years ago.

  3. P.S. to my earlier comment: To be fair, right-wing movements around the world have also used the methods of terror and guerilla warfare for decades.
    It would be tragic if we repeated the worst excesses of the Cold War — i.e., radicals and terrorists on “their” side vs. extremist puppet governments and “freedom fighters” on “our” side. That was how a lot of this current mess got started, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Blowback is a bitch…

  4. Ray:
    It’s certainly the case that the level of terrorism will decline once we smash the organizations; it’s just that smashing the organizations will be difficult if we have the full cooperation of other state-level actors, and virtually impossible withiut them.
    And since there are a lot of weak states, and states who have an axe to grind with us, we can expect that we won’t get that cooperation until those states agree to stamp out the terrorist organizations.
    Hmmm…I may have just inadvertently made the key argument for invading Iraq…
    But even once the organziations are smashed, we will continue to see a low level of spontaneous terrorist activiity as long as the cultures and politics of the Muslim states are a screwed up as they are today.
    It may look more like El Al/LAX/July 4 ’02 than Manahttan/Sepetmber 11 ’01 … but it will be here and be a very real threat.
    A.L.

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