Here's a bit of international perspective from one of our friends in
Sweden:
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Before we return to the normal topics of the list,
I would like to look backwards and try to analyse how the present tragedy
became possible. This might help to identify the way to go beyond
reprisals.
Since this is about history, (although it would fit in a list
dedicated to the works of Gerald Seymour, such as "Harry's Game")
you can delete this posting from the archive
-First, suicide pilots do not emerge spontaneously.
In a way the terrorism directed against the United States is a hangover
of
the cold war.
During this era, USA built up a network of allies abroad and successfully
isolated the Soviet Union. This network came at a prize.
While *European* countries have reason to be grateful for the US support,
many US allies in the world -certainly in the Middle East-
were and are repressive military (or feudal) dictatorships, who received
economic and military support from the US.
In the mind of those who opposed the governments, USA became one with
those
repressive regimes.
For instance, Khomeini's hatred for "Great Satan" was founded under the
rule
of the Shah of Iran, who regained power after one of the first
CIA-sponsored
coups.
The Shah, by the way, successfully exterminated the westernized
democratic
opposition.
He tried, and failed, to exterminate the islamic opposition, since this
had
much *deeper roots* than the opposition of the small west-influenced
middle
class:
this can be seen as a template for the situation in many Middle East
countries.
(Another of the western allies of the era was the Baath party
dictatorship
of Iraq; When the Baath sized power in the sixties,
in competition with the communists, CIA gave the Baath death squads the
names of suspected communists in the country.
One of the security goons was a young officer named Saddam Hussein.
He and his cronies would enjoy a good "Realpolitik" relation with the
West,
until the invasion of Kuweit.)
The Israel-Arab conflict added another dimension of complexity. It is
partly
territorial, but increasingly got a religious component.
After the traumatic defeat by Israel 1967, many regarded secular arab
nationalism as discredited, and turned to religion for answers
(Western parlamentary democracy was not an option under the governments
of
the era).
Now that the Soviet Union is gone, the mess remains as a monument to
Realpolitik.
-Second, massive reprisals *will* backfire.
To understand why, consider what is behind the euphemism
"collateral damage".
The continued sanctions against Iraq a decade after the war did not hurt
Saddam and his cronies. It *did* hurt the civilian population.
Western sources (not the Iraqi ministry of propaganda)
estimate that as many as half a million children have died of hunger and
lack of medical supplies!
This is not a factor of ten, but a factor of *hundred* more than the
number
of victims of the WTC attack !
While this *in no way justifies* the atrocity in New York or Washington,
it has caused widespread anger among people in the Middle East, even
among
those who hate Saddam Hussein, and would like to see him fall.
It seems to them the lives of moslem civilians do not matter to the West
as
much as the lives of white anglo-saxon protestants.
Another bungled job:
The bombing of Khartoum by Clinton destroyed not only a pharmaceutical
factory that may have doubled as a bioweapons factory, it also destroyed
a
large part of the medicine supplies in a third world country.
The exact number of dead as a result of medicine shortage will not be
known;
The UN considered to make an independent investigation about the claims
of
the production of bioweapons, and about the effects of the raid; the US
represantive vetoed the investigation.
The whole business caused resentment among many countries who otherwise
supported the US struggle against terrorism; the bombing probably did
more
harm than good (also, see comments by Noam Chomsky).
And while 99% of those moslems who resent western policies would *not*
have anything to do with Bin Laden,
or his extreme form of religious and political activism,
the statistical bell curve guarantees that a few thousand
(of a population base of several hundred million)
will be angry enough to be recruited.
In case you think I have an anti-US bias (I do not), consider instead the
conflict in Northern Ireland.
Every time commando soldiers succeeded in ambushing an IRA group, there
would be a new wave of recruits for IRA, otnumbering those who had been
killed. Martyrs were good business for IRA recruiters.
I have no magic political solution that might sort everything out.
Obviously the solutions must be long-term and aimed at defusing conflicts
in
general. They must be concerned with improving both living conditions and
human rights.
This "only" amounts to changing the world, not a matter I can sort out in
an
evening before the PC !
Yours
Birger Johansson
UmeB.
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Hmta MSN Explorer kostnadsfritt pB http://explorer.msn.se
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