"What might cause another 9/11?"

A facebook friend posted this article:

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/12/what_might_cause_another_911/

Thought I should share it.

Post 1

Sunday, July 1, 2012 - 7:45pm

Your friend provided a very strong argument regarding causation of the Islamic Terrorists fierce motivations. Those who disagree with any or all of the American military actions in the mid-East point at blowback and them make it sound like we are morally in the wrong.

Those who agree with most of these military actions say that talking about blowback is an act of moral appeasement, or a form of apology, as if it were our moral fault that we are under attack.

I don't think we've found the proper approach to this new kind of war being fought with more or less stateless, civilian surrogates who mostly attack civilian targets.

I think we are very short-sighted to not follow the money, however hard that is, to its source. Killing those who fund terrorism would seem to be the best approach. Cut off the money and energy will be spent trying to stay fed. And if a head of state is actively funding or directing a terrorist, he should be tried and killed.

And no matter which side someone is on in this political argument - for or against this military action or that - they should all be done in a way that respects the separation of powers, and due process. We should have judicial tribunals that hear arguments, hear witnesses, and observe the rule of law before anyone could be put on some "kill" list. And if we are killing large numbers of civilians with these drone attacks, they need to be stopped - saying we are at war is neither true technically, nor is true in the sense that we have no choice as a nation to take those actions. We aren't in a war of the intensity or danger of the extinction of nation as we were in WWII where civilian deaths in those countries we declared on were unavoidable.

For a head of state, the trial should be public. Snatch the defendant if possible, and if not, just publicly announce that he will be tried in absentia. After a guilty verdict, execute him.

We seem to be stuck between to wrong ways to prosecute the war on terrorist - either not enough, and lots of apologies and political correctness from some, and throwing away all observations of individual rights, the protections of law, and the separation of powers on the other side. And nation building is just an unbelievable stupid waste of money and lives..

Post 2

Sunday, July 1, 2012 - 9:42pm

Should the US then kidnap and try the Russian head of state for providing nuclear technology to the Iranians?

Post 3

Monday, July 2, 2012 - 3:10am

Well, that's a thought :-)

Post 4

Monday, July 2, 2012 - 6:55am

Steve:

It is not our aggression which invites another 9/11; it is our continued existence as a secular state.

Radicals raised in deeply theocratic states have no wish to see a secular America do anything but bleed from the ass. Their theocratic power elite (who control even nominally secular civil nations as de facto if not declared theocracies, by controlling the street) have long ago correctly concluded "It is them or us."

And they are right, no matter how we feel about it, including, ambivalent.

They don't need signs of our insufficient willingness to defend ourselves to inflame their hatred of us; in fact, they are inflamed by any signs of weak propitiation. We play nice, and they smell blood in the water.

It doesn't matter what their peace loving modern-moderates think about this conflict, and playing to them doesn't end the conflict; they don't control the street, they don't control the political power in those nations.

9/11 was a severe blow to our economies. It's not clear we weathered that blow. Our economies are sputtering today. We're ripe.

We're busy with our own internal struggle to defend freedom, and barely recognize that it is precisely the nature of our secular freedom which inflames the religious nut faction of the theocratic Muslim world, which unfortunately controls their street, their politics, their education, and the lifelong fomenting of their crazies.

The very reason that we attempt to keep a lid on our own eyes rolled into the back of their head crazies and keep them away from the guns of state(we've largely failed, by way of a stealth religion, Progressivism, taking hold)is what drives their crazies mad with existential fear; if the US is shown going to the Moon and opening up Disneylands, while their millions are living in the squalor of their tribal consequences, then those theocrats have no means of holding onto power for very long.

They have long known that, and they have long acted accordingly, educating generations of their own True Believer crazies.

Our own defense of freedom has long atrophied; we thought history was over, and modernity had won. We were wrong.

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/02, 6:56am)

Post 5

Thursday, July 5, 2012 - 11:23pm

fred raised a very good point about the moderates. I always like to use the analogy of the petty thief and the murderer. both act on the premise of death, except the thief doesn't go all the way while the murderer does. it is the same thing with the "moderate" and "extremist" factions of a particular ideology or movement. the core of those ideologies/movements is always driven by fundamentality i.e the extreme elements. the moderates don't matter, peaceful as they maybe and as the evil gets bolder, the moderates go �deer in the headlights� and become less and less relevant as ballast.
(Edited by Michael Philip on 7/06, 12:12am)

Post 6

Friday, July 6, 2012 - 2:17am

Fred,

It is not our aggression which invites another 9/11; it is our continued existence as a secular state.

It is both... and there is more, it is also because they are getting away with it.

And I agree that they respond aggressively to weakness, to an absence of hostility being returned at them, or even just the failure to use all physical power available against them. They see these all as signs of weakness - one of things I despise about much of the middle east is in the psychology built into their culture - the lack of self-esteem, the men who are afraid of women, the hatred of sexuality, the irrational angers, the blind faith, and the perception of fairness or restraint as weakness, the acceptance of deceit and lies as justified.

How to end this historical conflict is a difficult question. I don't think that we can end it militarily without using nuclear weapons - or nearly the equivalent. And that would be evil and it wouldn't really end it, it would just bury a deep hatred in billions of people that would bubble up later. Even irrational ideas can't be killed with bombs.

The real end has to be the moderate muslims rising up and resetting the culture and the politics - they must have a religious reform movement that sweeps the entire muslim world. I don't see any way we can initiate that. (But I also don't see anyone else trying either). It might be the outcome of a a major, world-wide, religious war, but that wouldn't be a justification for launching B-52's.

I'm not suggesting playing to muslim moderates - because I don't see it as effective. I think we have to be harsh in our responses to the those who fund terrorism and to those rogue nations that officially support terrorism. Cutting off the money funding terrorism would be very helpful, but it isn't the long term answer. Nation building won't work. Democracy isn't going to take root in the Middle East, and if it did it would be to elect the Muslim Brotherhood.

I think we should take back all the oil fields that were nationalized - that is a legitimate use of force. We should push our own sanctions on Iran (as opposed to the UNs) because they are actually at war with us now, and push it hard enough that it goes to overt war, like Japan when we cut off their oil. Or, support their population as they rise up throwing out that regime. There is a real cowardice under their anger and if Iran were ever hit really hard, the other nations would change their tunes. They have a pack dog mentality - hit the alpha dog hard enough and the pack backs off. But we have to find ways to live within our constitution and remain a nation of laws or we tossed the baby out with the bathwater.

Long term, it is the hatred of the clerics that keep rolling out new generations of emotionally stunted, ignorant, true believers whose religion calls for violent jihad.

Real leadership would make a big difference. It would mean being a fully capitalist nation, and proudly so. And take away the sanction we give evil all over the place - kick out the UN - a decent president would speak before the UN pointing out that it is ragged collection of tin pot dictators, tyrants and crooks and withdraw and revoke all the UN visas.

I don't have a lot of answers. From my viewpoint I don't see any way to cure this, no plan of action that seems like it would have a chance of working at this time.

Post 7

Saturday, July 7, 2012 - 1:37pm

Steve,

It is both... and there is more, it is also because they are getting away with it.

And I agree that they respond aggressively to weakness, to an absence of hostility being returned at them, or even just the failure to use all physical power available against them. They see these all as signs of weakness ...

I'm kind of on-board with you here, but not fully. I was surprised to learn that Clinton bombed Iraq pretty much constantly. I heard a rumor that there never was a week that went by without a bomb being dropped by Clinton. This struck me as odd. Aren't Democrats pacifists? They sure had ganged up on GW Bush for being a beligerent cowboy and flexing his military muscle. Then I heard that Clinton bombed Iraq constantly, and I asked myself how come I hadn't heard of this before (how come I had continued to think that Democrats were pacifists and that only Republicans flexed military muscle?). Are Republicans war-mongers and Democrats pacifists -- or is there actually no difference -- and we are just made to believe that there is (by a media that makes it seem like Democrats aren't war-mongers). Just yesterday, I heard on NPR that Obama is bombing Yemen. Well, let me back off from that just a bit. What I heard was a story about how Yemenites were getting bombed a lot, and how they "say" that it is the Americans that are doing the bombing (with drones).

Somebody's bombing Yemen.

Anyway, my point is that every US president in the last 2 decades has pretty much consistently bombed-the-crap out of some country or another. It's not always on the 6:00pm news, but it appears to be always happening. It appears that there is no line of demarcation, no philosophy difference, which lends itself to one party flexing military muscle (i.e., bombing countries) and the other side attempting to refrain from the otherwise-constant bombings. Instead, both sides engage in it, and it doesn't appear that there is any great length of time where the US refrains from such assertive (some would say, aggressive) military action in foreign countries.

The point is that Islamofascists may be "getting away with it" but that is not because of our weakness or some kind of an elusive absence of hostility. I challenge you to show me one full month in the last 240 months (the last 2 decades) when the US supposedly achieved an "absence of hostility."

Ed

Post 8

Saturday, July 7, 2012 - 3:39pm

Responding to pure belligerency by Saddam:

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/04/world/words-of-clinton-and-saddam-hussein-fiercely-clashing-views.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Post 9

Saturday, July 7, 2012 - 4:02pm

Ed,

I agree with most of what you wrote. But, your final point is that Islamofascists aren't getting away with it because of the continued bombing. Well, it is true that we have been removing top leaders of Al Qaeda - that is an example of key terrorists not getting away with it.

But I still have to disagree.

The people who fund and direct the terrorism are not being bombed. Their soldiers and dupes are getting bombed. Money men in Saudi Arabia are getting away with it. The clerics, the president and the Revolutionary Guard of Iran are getting away with it.

I'm not seeing anything being done that we might hope would end Islamofacist terrorism at anywhere near current threat levels. Do you see something I'm missing?

Post 10

Sunday, July 8, 2012 - 12:58pm

Steve,

I need to tell you that I do ultimately agree with your conclusion -- that we should follow the money, and eradicate (by any and all means) the source of the money funding Islamofascist terrorism. After that, we could look to other forms of terrorism but, for now, we should eradicate whatever and whoever is funding Islamofascism. Several years ago, I wrote an essay here about how to go about fighting a global war on terror. It involved funding assassination groups with a national "freedom" lottery. I think that fictional essay of mine is still relevant today.

:-)

Ed

Post 11

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 7:54am

Ed:

For decades ... Hell, for almost a century... the street in these nations have been methodically educated by the religious power elites who control everything in those nations to fear and loathe the West, led as it is by America, the state that proudly, in writing, declares that it is Godless. Imagine how that is perceived in a theocracy.

Can we see how a successful America -- increasingly broadcast 24/7 on 500 channels with all of its excesses that look nothing like life in the slums of Cairo and Dhaka, etc., -- by its very existence in the world, would be perceived as an existential threat to the Old Men In Robes running the local theocracies?

The very existence of secular America is an existential threat to their political power as theocrats, and they have acted accordingly. It doesn't matter in the least if we were in fact(we aren't)peace loving and wildly non-aggressive and totally unwilling to defend our right to live free(which is exactly what is at stake.) The mere fact of our continued successful existence in the world is a threat to their power. America can't appear to be succeeding while much of the Muslim world is living in self-inflicted squalor--which is largely successfully blamed by the local Old Men In Robes on the Great Satan.

It doesn't matter if we look away, and say to Hell with it, we are just going to get on with this party called modernity, and those that feel so inclined are welcome to join. The Dark Ages is saying "Not so fast," and like always and forever and as it shall ever be, is demanding that modernity prove the point.

The West does not want to prove the point. The West wants to get on with the party called modernity. The West suffers from the Western disease, and ended both WWI and WWII before all the combatants had been pacified and before all the points had been made. A war weary West, looking at the vacuum in the Mediterranean left by the collapse of the Ottoman empire, said 'surely the point has been made? Can't you let us just redraw the maps and let us get on with the party?' Ataturk saw the writing on the wall and quickly transformed Turkey into a modern state...but Turkey left the former colonies of the Ottoman Empire in chaos, a mandated ward of the barely willing West, and the too soon declared victorious West had little heart to press the point. And so, the remnants of the Dark Ages said "Not so fast," and the final end of those last century world conflicts has simmered for decades, unfinished business deemed an acceptable level of conflict.

And lets face it, a profitable level of conflict. Somebody is selling all those weapons systems.

History hasn't ended. There's no sign that it will soon. There is no ascendency to the top of any hills in this universe without a struggle to get there, and there is no remaining without a struggle to stay. If we don't, somebody else will. In this instance, there isn't just one hill; but the theocratic world, struggling to run up its own paradigm hills, can't do so when a secular America is so easily seen climbing its own hill. If the theocrats are going to remain the power elite on their local hills, then America must be torn down. They know that, even if we don't care while enjoying the view from our own hard fought hill.

Post 12

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 11:48am

Fred,

I agree that Islamofascists will never, ever stop aggression against us -- that the only "solution" would be to put them all into the ground. Even then, new ones might be born, so the fight needs to be in the ideological/philosophical realm. And I agree that our culture right now is really some pretty poor battle armor for this fight.

That's why -- it's one of the reasons why -- I participate here.

:-)

Ed

Post 13

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 12:44pm

Ed:

It is disheartening, because the Muslim world does include significant moderns-moderates, who are plaintively hoping to see their world modern-up already. But they aren't ruling the local dialog-- check that, the local monologue in their nations. The fundamentalist crazies are, they rule the street and lead it around by the under-educated and over-instructed nose.

It's not like there is a tiny minority of modern-moderates; I think like most people everywhere, there are lots of folks who want to live their lives and raise their families and even worship as they see fit, just like here. But they aren't seething and plotting and fomenting all the fear and loathing; they aren't driving the national politics.

They are not in power, and are kind of patiently on the side-lines, riding out this conflict, quietly waiting to see how it is going to turn out. They live in fear of their own crazies suddenly instructing the street to eat them, if they don't toe the line. And, they are not seeing much help from a West which regrets cleaning house in Iraq, which took a pass in Libya and Egypt, which is averting its eyes in Syria, which is not confronting Iran, and which is in an uneasy stall in Afghanistan.

The smart money is on those straining to prevail; that is no longer a broke-busted US led by a poser spouting banalities in front of a world that is laughing at him, and smiling to his face, relieved to see that he's leading us down the hill.

Revolution and overthrow in those nations doesn't necessarily usher those modern-moderates into power, either, and yet, that is the only hope for the West of ending this conflict. This is compounded by our earlier half-hearted failures at shaping events in those wards-of-the-west mandated territories, former colonies in thrall to the Ottomans for hundreds of years. We backed corrupt bastards like Saddam as long as we thought that he was our corrupt bastard and would keep the lid on the local crazies, and for too long didn't care how he did that.

Well, how do you do that?

Because ... not so much. We're not winning any PR or instructional wars over there. We're barely in contention. We're mostly dodging 7.62x39mm and whatnot as a deadly training exercise with a murkily defined mission that seems uncomfortably similar to the body-count days of Vietnam. War of attrition? They live in attrition. It's us with something to lose. Clear&control? Forever, or until we declare victory and bail? Again.

We are not going to out-breed the fundamentalist crazies. We are not going to nuke them. We are not going to war with them. And by all evidence, we are not going to leave them in the dust by out-developing them; our economies are stuck in the current cul de sac of waiting for our own internal bad ideas to finally fly, which is never going to happen.

And so, we are ineffectively holding them off, expensively playing armed drone whack-a-mole, as polite a low level conflict as we can muster under the radar, weary of the need to, waiting for something to change, and they are patiently pressing the point, waiting for us to finally collapse from our effort at world empire, just like every past example.

Post 14

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 1:05pm

I certainly agree with Fred's analysis. It is a war of ideas, but there is a catch. Political ideas have a great deal of trouble being implemented in a context where the initiation of violence is permitted. This is the context in those places, like Iran, where the majority of the people are not fundamentalists. If their political system were changed, just to the point where opposing views could be freely and safely expressed, then it would only be a matter of time till the problem with Radical Islam would become history.

But there is no practical way to force that and all we can do is set the best example we can (not just in being free to express ideas, but in flourishing in each and every way). Then other peoples can come around to forcing their governments to follow suit. Meantime, its a matter of defending as best we can against terrorist attacks, and trying to cut off the money flow to terrorist organizations.

Post 15

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 4:56pm

Steve:

I think you bring up a really good point about the regard for force/violence in many of the poorest parts of the Muslim world-- the acceptance of violence as a matter of course and the regard for life. Not only permitted, but embraced.

I don't think broad America has any idea at all what everyday life is like in those streets. The intensity might vary, but you are at least somewhat fearful for your life most of the time when in public. (Not just westerners, but any living being on the street.) Violence in one form or the other can erupt at any moment.

Imagine living like that 24/7/365. It soon feeds on itself.

An instant education is witnessing the results of a traffic accident(which happens often in poor, crowded cities, where the only observable traffic laws are based on physics: how big is the vehicle you are driving in, the one belching dense, black smoke because the diesels over there are burning any fuel they can.)

In the west, this would be cause for EMTs and ambulances. In places like Dhaka, the enraged crowd descends on the victims in the street, drags them to the side of the road, and berates them(translated: beats and screams at them) for causing a traffic disturbance by not getting out of the way of the larger vehicle. Maybe family members or associates will lend actual assistance after the fact, but the crowd's response is ... bewildering to a Westerner when experiencing it for the first time. The visceral response is beyond cultural; it is hard to mentally accept that this is part of our same species. This can be described, but it can't be believed until it is witnessed.

Another example is what happens during Hartals, when violators are summarily executed in the street by gangs of religious enforcers. Violators might be a desperate rickshaw driver, finally able to compete with the taxis and three wheeled Cushmans, and his also desperate fare. The papers the next day carry the city by city body counts like cricket scores.

On Hartal days, not even the bayonet wielding military takes to the streets; they stay on base behind the walls, and leave the streets to those who own them, and that isn't the nominal civil government.

Or, on any non-Hartal day, when business can be conducted, everyday acts of commerce often involve a larger man screaming down a smaller man into submission as a negotiating tactic.

The message is clear; life is cheap, force and violence are the linga franca of the local tribe, death and dying is an everyday occurrence, and the religious crazies are the ultimate power.

This is 'the street' on the other side of the getting smaller world. It is not responsive to the kind of polite nuanced arguments offered up around the crab spread at our basic DC Renaissance Weekend event.

Do we broadly fully understand what is so far keeping that from showing up on our streets? I don't see how we can, when we are barely aware of its existence.

Post 16

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 10:44pm

Fred,

It is frightning to see the increased acceptance of violence in our country. Your description of everyday street violence talks about a mentality I really, really don't want to see coming here (but that is the direction we are going).

Violence and voluntary association are worse than oil and water, it's more like a kind of Cultural Gresham's law - acceptance of violence as a day to day norm will drive out voluntary association as the primary method of interaction. It will spread and it will grow in frequency and in the areas it is used and the ways it is used.

It takes away the ability to make plans when those plans require voluntary association that is agreed to in the present but are commitments into the future.

Logic, knowledge and persuasion directed at improving the well-being of the person you want to make a deal with are the means of gaining agreement in societies that see voluntary association as the standard. When violence is accepted, you see people shift to short term thinking, threats of force, emotionalism, and lots of yelling as the means of doing business.

Voluntary association promotes the respect for life and consideration for what others want. Acceptance of some degree of force in a market encourages the view of life as cheap. Force reinforces the motivation to use force making it a kind of positive feedback cycle.
---------------

The very long term trend - in an epistemological context - is a shift to more and more individualism - to the soverignty of the individual. I say "epistemological" rather than "ethical" because to really live in an ethical egoism context can't be done - practically - without more of psychological comfort with individualism. I think that much of what we see of collectivism and ugly tribalism are almost like angry reactions. My father's generation was far more tightly governed by cultural strictures of "duty" - duty to God, duty to nation, duty to cultural standards, etc. You have described the way the secular progressives and academics are pushing a new religion. Many will have this new sense of duty to the Green movement, to Social Justice, to regulations as such, etc. But this is still a less coherent, less comprehensive, less rigid set of duties. We are seeing the governing morals and ethics disappearing with old religion, and old sets of duties are dying out. We are even shifting away from the sense of what it means to live as a nation of laws. Pragmatism and some mixture of religious (old or new) values drive things in a quasi-principled fashion. All of that will drag within its wake a lessening of the focus on never accepting violence that is outside of self-defense.

Post 17

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 6:26am

Steve:

Well put.

I had a related conversation with my wife just last night, about the upcoming election. One, we no longer have an election season/cycle between elections; election season is continuous. The nation is so divided that it is in constant political conflict. Two, remember that nonsense in 2008 in Philadelphia with the thugs at the polling station, intimidating voters? There were no consequences. It was barely investigated. Meaning, we are going to see more of it this time.

So our prediction was, that we are going to see an increasing level of violence in America, exacerbated by the coming election. What used to be a bi-annual ritualistic blood-letting is going to become ever more an actual blood-letting.

The clock on this slide back to the jungle was put off by the recent USSC decision; appeasement. The free-for-some goodies are on the way, any day now. But if Romney is close in November, then it seems likely we will see increasing violence in the nation. We are that dysfunctional. The news of the tribal world and its jungle rules is no longer across the oceans. Mankind's flight to individual freedom and away from the tribal jungle is at a new end of the road.

I used to believe, in this nation, in its then current political context, that the first faction to wane violent loses. But in our current climate, I think that only applies to the political right and its weak defense of individual freedom. It is accepted when the political left wanes violent in the name of collective demands painted as new rights, and even celebrated. There is no comparison between the street behavior of OWS and the Teaparty.

The issue is always ultimately decided by violence. Always. Either by way of defense of principles, or by way of tearing them down and replacing them with competing principles. Our politics is severely broken, and at the end of that breaking is violence. I've found it impossible to be optimistic about any of that.

Maybe with enough alcohol.

I don't think America needs a new 9/11...we're sprinting downhill on our own just fine.

regards,
Fred

Post 18

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 9:37am

Fred,

We agree on the principles and the trends, but I'm not as pessimistic. I'm nervous, and concerned, but I can still see a recovery as possible.

We see more collectivism being applied in hand-outs, and a greater sense of entitlement among a larger group than ever before. We see an advanced group of progressives that have more power and money and organization than ever before. We see a large, dysfunctional inner-city and college-dropout core of ready-to-riot troops. But we don't see all of those people who get up and go to work and would never side with any sudden change from the status quot (like the frog in the pot of the water metaphor, they seem to accept change if it comes slowly but will hop away from boiling water).

More and more I'm seeing that much of what these tribalists are doing is like the wizard of oz - just loud noises made by a phony facade. This is a tiny group, playing to the weaker side of a minority of the population, touting an unworkable scheme and hoping to get away with some magical transformation before someone pulls the curtain back and exposes them.

In a big way, this is so ludicrous as to be laughable. There is a small group who offer nothing but some flawed arguments that amount to saying it is okay if we steal what is yours. We still vastly outnumber them. That they get away with this stuff at all is amazing enough to warrant inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records.

The continuous election cycle and the harsh partisanship is welcome when you recognize that it is due to the fact that the opposing sides are finally arguing the core issues - government in control of all aspects of life, or not. That has to a partisan issue until it is resolved. In this sense, the more partisan it becomes, the better.

The outcome of this battle is in the hearts of the average citizen. They are acquiring a bit more of an education by watching this political fight, but their allegiance and its intensity will come more from an emotional response to the choice between returning to more of the free enterprise system, of completing the transformation into take from those who work to give it the unwashed that don't even want to work. One doesn't need to be a scholar of Libertarian principles to grasp the unfairness of what is being done today.

So, we have a chance to win the political battle and that buys time, and provides more tools to facilitate the kind of education that is needed to make philosophical wins.

(As a side note: I'll be buying a sailboat and outfitting it for long distance cruising - for fun, and because I've promised myself a nice long South Pacific cruise before I'm too old, but also in case our nation loses this battle and goes farther in the wrong direction)

Post 19

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 10:03am