PETER HITCHENS: Really want to beat terror? Then calm down and THINK
hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk
hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk
I was born in a country that (somewhat) supported terrorism - Czechoslovakia. Eventually we switched sides (and later also somewhat supported terrorism again). Why did we switch sides? Because our emigrants received support from the West (while we were receiving very little terrorism). The West didn't engage the Warsaw pact directly (or semi-directly through terrorism), but through cultural war. That's why (at least I think) the West was successful in the Eastern Europe, but not in the Latin America, or in the Middle East.
In my opinion, immigrants are the key to successful foreign policy. The reason they are coming is because you're doing something better than their home leaders. And they will tell their relatives in their home country that, very passionately.
The terrorism is short-term strategy of states or other groups that are massively losing the cultural war (kinda like firing employees to boost profits). The long-term strategy is outlined above (and as every long-term strategy it entails element of getting better). So don't worry about the culture; if your opponent resorts to terrorism, your culture has already won!
Unfortunately, multiculturalism has often been used as an excuse for not doing enough. Many times I have heard police to say (about some atrocity that happened in some subculture) that this is "how they do things in their culture/community". It's unacceptable excuse for not doing the job.
Appeal of radicalism is ultimately a social issue like many others (say, appeal of drugs, appeal of violence), and it should be dealt with as such. People on the right don't like the idea of telling somebody what to do at someone else's expense, but I am afraid that good prevention (access to education, having good job) is the only thing that really works here.
Whether citizens will accept the above is of course up to them, but I am convinced (from empirical evidence) that this is the best way to handle the problem in open society. If, on the other hand, the goal is to remove as much terrorism as possible, then the open society is perhaps no good. If you close off borders, have isolationist foreign policy, and establish a semi-totalitarian regime, you will probably get less terrorism (this was case of Czechoslovakia in the past). But this strategy probably comes with its own set of disadvantages (according to this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_immigrant..., the only country that seems to be worth immigrating into with low amount of immigrants is Japan).
How do you retaliate against a concept? The US has created more terrorists in the last 14 years by attempting to do just that.
Mental game: you're a terrorist. For the sake of the exercise your enemy is daytime television. Teletubbies bomb your house from the sky and in the process your wife and daughters, all innocent, are killed. The only survivor - your son. Your son now hates Teletubbies. He fucking hates them. Consider that he might want to exact revenge. Daytime television now has a new enemy, assuming he has no friends or other family members sympathetic to his plight. If he does, you have more than one new enemy.
As others have said, bombing didn't work the first time...
His post also seems to suggest that ISIS derives their control over the people in their territory through popular support. This is not the case. Most of the populace is simply trying to survive ISIS rule, as is typically the case in totalitarian regimes. Sadly, the reality of the situation in Syria and Iraq is that there aren't really alternatives the people find worthy of risking their necks to rally behind. And the brutality of the official regimes and those regimes' allies, combined with the brutality of ISIS, preclude better alternatives from presenting themselves.
And none of this can be divorced from the geopolitical situation. The calculus of nuclear non-proliferation, our eternal chess matches with Russia and China, and energy politics have shaped our strategy from the start, and largely led to the outcomes we've seen. If not for these things, we may have supported a partitioning of Iraq early on, knowing that the Arab Shia portion would have naturally aligned itself with Iran, an independent Kurdistan would have deeply upset our Turkish allies, a new Arab Sunni land would have been a big question mark, and the cities and resources would have been very difficult to allocate.
But now, such a partition seems like it wouldn't have been the worst idea in the world, and has largely de facto happened under very poorly controlled circumstances.
way to go.
"An unnamed asshole shot up a school today. We will never know why because fuck that asshole."
I remember after 911 an interview on the radio with an ex IRA terrorist who served 20 years in prison for what he did. He was asked if Terrorist's generally think what they are doing is right. He said, absolutely not. The more correct description of their state of mind is "there is no other choice but this".
He said that his terror cell had been driven to do what they did because every other avenue to seek redress was systematically closed. He said if you wan't to stop terror attacks you have to keep the dialogue, keep the political solutions open. You have to have political solutions. You have to move towards other solutions. You have to keep all the options open and you have to address the very real injustices that these people are fighting for.
It's when they have absolutely nothing left, but to die... that's when you have a problem. And despite what the government and security apparatus promise, there is NOTHING any government can do EVER to completely protect it's citizens from such attacks.
I'll sum up with another parable. A Buddhist monk explained to his students that the world was covered in sharp stones that could cut our feet at any time. Was it possible to wrap the entire earth in leather, so that we could walk safely apon it? Of course not. So instead we wrap our feet in leather and it protects us from all the sharp stones in the world.
Likewise, in this Universe you will find infinite enemies. It is impossible to wrap all their hearts in kindness to protect us from them. So instead we wrap our own heart in kindness, and that protects us from all enemies.
>And then there is the rapid casting aside of ancient, wise rules. Our irreplaceable liberty and justice, which took a thousand years to create, are in shreds thanks to hasty and emotive measures that did no good. And now we have the shame of lawless confinement of untried men in Guantanamo, of torture that Englishmen, far fiercer and crueller than we think we are, abandoned as barbaric hundreds of years ago. And we have the horrors of ‘extraordinary rendition’ by secret flights to secret prisons, in which dark things took place. How can we claim to stand for liberty and justice if we do such things?
Yes indeed, how can we claim to stand for liberty and justice if we do such things?
Another:
> these things would still be hard to prevent if we turned ourselves into a totalitarian state of surveillance, identity cards, perpetual searches of the innocent – like going through an airport, only all the time.
Yes. This is important. There is a certain level of destruction and terrorism that we, as a society, must learn to accept as inevitable, unstoppable. We should still try to stop all terrorism, of course, but we should maintain no illusions about what is even theoretically possible. There is no amount of money or effort or freedom we can spend to prevent all terrorist attacks. Therefore, it's important for us to take these blows, much as we take the blows of natural disasters, and simply move on. Our society is mighty, and we can do it.