{"id":137,"date":"2003-07-20T05:40:13","date_gmt":"2003-07-20T05:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:16","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:16","slug":"unlike_skateboarding_terrorism_is_not_a_crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=137","title":{"rendered":"Unlike Skateboarding, Terrorism Is Not A Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin (Calpundit) pretty clearly delineates the distinction between his position on the War in Iraq and mine here<\/a>. He says, in summary:<\/p>\n

…I guess maybe that’s at the core of the schism in America today. Lileks and his compatriots think the terrorists have the power to bring western civilization to its knees, whereas I think of them as simply a threat that we will rather quickly and efficiently dispatch. They may be scary, but in terms of actual power they are the merest flea on the back of the United States and the rest of the western democracies.<\/p>\n

I wonder what it is that causes such vast gulfs in instinctive reaction between people who probably more or less agree on the actual nature of the threat itself?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, I’ve covered much of this already, in a post I did in March<\/a>, before the war. I said then:<\/p>\n

The pattern of Arab terrorism, unlike Irish terrorism, or Tamil terrorism, has been expansionist and ambitious. Unlike the IRA, who at the height of the recent insurrection, struck at British power either through attacks on British soldiers in Ulster or through largely symbolic attacks on the British mainland, the Islamist battle against the West has escalated from aircraft hijackings to Olympic terror, to hijacking ocean liners, to the original attack on the WTC, to the Cole to 9\/11.<\/p>\n

And while in fact, the Clinton Administration was somewhat effective in following a ‘legalistic’ arrest and try strategy, it obviously hasn’t worked<\/b>. I’ve always been annoyed at the righties who claimed that Clinton was snoozing at the switch and that the only U.S. response to terrorism was to lob a cruise missile into an aspirin plant.<\/p>\n

The reality is that Clinton’s team was highly focussed on terrorism…but on terrorism as crime, as opposed to as an instrument of war<\/b>. We focussed on identifying the actual perpetrators, and attempting to arrest them or cause their arrest.<\/p>\n

This is pretty much the typical liberal response to 9\/11. Send in SWAT, pull ’em out in cuffs, and let’s sit back and watch the fun on Court TV.<\/p>\n

I’ve been ambivalent about whether this is a good strategy conceptually, and looking at the history…in which we’re batting about .600 in arresting and trying Islamist terrorists…I have come to the realization that the fact is that it hasn’t worked<\/b>. The level and intensity of terrorist actions increased, all the way through 9\/11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

And a part of what I have realized is that as long as states – particularly wealthy states – are willing to explicitly house terrorists and their infrastructure, or implicitly turn a blind eye to their recruitment and funding, we can’t use the kind of ‘police’ tactics that worked against Baader-Meinhof or the Red Army Faction. The Soviet Union and it’s proxies offered limited support to these terrorist gangs, but they didn’t have a national population to recruit from and bases and infrastructure that only a state can provide.<\/p>\n

So unless we shock the states supporting terrorism into stopping, the problem will get worse. Note that it will probably get somewhat worse if we do…but that’s weather, and I’m worried about climate.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The specific climate I’m worried about is one that is effected by two things; one is pragmatic, and one philosophical.<\/p>\n

The pragmatic issue is that the ratio of damage to effort that a committed amateur can do is rising rapidly, and pretty arguably approaching the hockey-stick upswing so loved by venture capitalists. In an autarkic (self-sufficient) region or nation, it is hard to deeply damage a society or an economy. In a deeply interpenetrated world economy, where we have days of food, fuel and water on hand at any location, it is actually rather easy to have a truly significant impact. Now I’m obviosuly an immense believer in the resilience of humans and human systems. I’ve never been one to see THE COMING COLLAPSE as likely or even significantly possible. But I’m convinced that it wouldn’t be hard for a substate actor, or a group of moderately wealthy fanatics to cause enough damage to truly impact our lives for a really long time. It’s already been done.<\/p>\n

The philosophic issue is that the engine that drives our resilience<\/a> is faith – in our futures and each other – and hope. The same circumstance may be a hardship to some and a Holocaust to others. Looking at our society, I’m seeing more and more<\/a> that convinces me that not only do we have a deficit of hope and faith, but that the deficit in some is so vast that it tilts them toward<\/a> the kind of mad actions that we worry about.<\/p>\n

While the reality of Arab terror is that it is today a sign of political and cultural weakness, not strength, our culture and politics are weak as well, and I worry about contagion. <\/p>\n

Someday, in my lifetime, we will see an animal rights or anti-abortion fanatic don an explosive vest and step into a crowded room and then on to history.<\/p>\n

I want to make that less likely.<\/p>\n

I want to make it clear to the state sponsors of terror that it is a losing proposition, and that they should find other ways to divert the frustrations of their population.<\/p>\n

I want terrorism to be an aberration, rather than a way of life. When it is truly an aberration, we can reduce it to the status of crime, and treat it as Kevin suggests.<\/p>\n

Until then, I’ll see it differently. And the difference in vision leads me to a far different kind of response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal thinks the equation of Islamist terror with crime lies at the heart of many liberals’ misconceptions with regard to the War on Terror. “When it is truly an aberration, we can reduce it to the status of crime, and treat it as Kevin suggests. Until then, I’ll see it differently. And the difference in vision leads me to a far different kind of response.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}