Here are a few comments. First, from ziska: <\/p>\n
I’m coming in in the middle, but I went back to the beginning and read most of what preceded. My comments:
\nI think lumping together Muslim terrorism, Indian ethnic violence, and European and American street crime is highly erroneous.
\nOsama Bin Laden did have a rational purpose. He wanted to drive the US out of Saudi Arabia and with it the Saudi regime, presumably replacing the Saud ruler with himself or someone of his own choosing.
\nA.L.: My issue isn\u0092t with his ultimate goals, but the basis in reality and in the connection between goals and means<\/I>
\nIn the Middle East, our support for corrupt authoritarian oil regimes has produced wealthy societies without any avenues for the exercise of citizenship, and to a degree (esp. Saudi) without access to Western knowledge. So whatever discontent there is will probably be in a traditional (anti-Western) form, there being no Western alternative.
\nA.L.But why is it anti-Western, as opposed to anti-House of Saud? Why is that the default condition?<\/I>
\nPalestinian terrorism is rational in the sense that there is a goal, Palestine. They have a better chance of reaching that goal than the IRA or the Basque separatists, I think. Terrorism is used because the alternative is to cease to exist as a force. Weapon of the weak, etc.
\nA.L. There are other means to fight asymmetrical wars; guerilla warfare, wars aimed at infrastructure, etc. The Palestinian model seems based on what would look the most dramatic on TV.<\/I>
\nThis was not a war of al-Qaeda vs. the US, with al-Q trying to defeat the US. The goal was to change US foreign policy and to stir up trouble.
\nBoth the 9\/11 terrorists and Palestinian terrorists are well funded by oil money which comes as “free money” to be dispensed at will (unlike earnings which have to be reinvested and managed). We don’t see Indonesian or Bangla Deshi terrorism because the funding isn’t there.
\nA.L.: I agree that the presence of oil money is a part of the equation. But I think iot is more in the social impacts than in the \u0091expense\u0092 issue. Actually, I\u0092m amazed that 9\/11 cost as much as it was claimed to. I could make Los Angeles hard to live in for about $300,000.<\/I>
\nI basically don’t think terrorism is a powerful analytic concept, partly because it privileges state violence. Most “sub-states” think of themselves as “pre-states”.
\nSee blogged comment above.<\/I>
\nFor example, even by your definitions some of the US-sponsored violence in Central America ca. 1980 was terrorist. Civilians were murdered in bulk for purposes of intimidation, in part by un-uniformed private police forces working outside the law (though winked at by the legal forces). Yet I don’t think you would want to count that as terrorism, because being insurgent (and perhaps futility) is really part of the definition.
\nYup, I\u0092d agree that state-sponsored or militia-sponsored violence in Central and Latin America walks close to and over the line of terrorism. It\u0092s something I\u0092m trying to talk about a bit in the wrapup.<\/I>
\nSo anyway, I would deal with the present case as a specific thing rather than a new state of the world order.
\nMy source for some of the above is The Hidden Truth, Dasquie & Brisard, which is a better book than the Corn, Cave, and Silverstein reviews would have you think.
\n— zizka<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here are a few comments. First, from ziska: I’m coming in in the middle, but I went back to the beginning and read most of what preceded. My comments: I think lumping together Muslim terrorism, Indian ethnic violence, and European and American street crime is highly erroneous. Osama Bin Laden did have a rational purpose. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}