And now for a completely different topic:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

A topic, however, that has much reference in today's era of the Regional War on Arab Extremism-er Global War on Terrorism. This topic is a seemingly obvious one but one I haven't seen referenced here before, namely what I've seen referred to elsewhere and can't remember precisely where I saw the term referred to as the democratization of mass violence. It is not a term I came up with.

Nowadays, to use the proverbial reference to the sheer quantity of information on Dar Intarwebs, one can find the requirements to make an atomic bomb or poison gas on the Internet, knowledge that at one point was rather more specialized, and with the right (or alternately as some would prefer to say the wrong) combination of balls and fanaticism one could actually try to home-make both weapons.

This is just one side of this democratization, the other is the increased effectiveness of IEDs and the most obvious point, the Kalashkinov-style assault rifle that can be mass-produced cheaply. At one point violence and particularly the military subset of violence was very much anything but democratic. War and the ability to kill people in large numbers was understood by specialists, and the size of both armies and the total number of people who knew how to effectively use weapons was rather small. Today, however, thanks to the spread of information-age technology and the greater ease of manufacturing weaponry, people can wind up with a lot of firepower for relatively little cost and with relatively little knowledge required of how to use it (and of course there's also the possibility of simply buying that shit in the first place but that's a grey area for this particular point).

As the United States in particular has committed itself to a so-called war against a bunch of nebulous movements, including Al-Qaeda the lethal decapitating franchise zombie, the reality of democratization of violence isn't going to help anything in the long term. It doesn't take a movement to do a lot of very evil and very lethal things, the neo-Nazi terrorist in Norway showed this to be so. If the USA's major tenet of our foreign policy is to wage war against the people who can do things like this, then all that's mentioned above, the ability to cheaply and in bulk produce weapons of great lethality will create an obvious problem.

To wage war on terrorism is akin to sifting the ocean with a sieve. It's not even like a hydra because can actually burn one of the cut-off heads to keep it from growing back. Terrorism is just a technologically-updated version of what used to be called gangsterism, and nobody uses Hellfire missiles to take down mafia dons. Given that people can and have the ability to do things at a lethality rate that not so long ago, even, was not remotely possible, how can this Global War on Terrorism ever end? If it does not end, does it not simply mean that the United States has committed itself open-endedly to a series of conflicts we in general don't bother to understand, for reasons unclear, with means unable to be specified?

So why then is it that this whole concept is still considered to be a good or wise thing? This is not to say terrorism does not exist, and it is not to say that it should not be stopped. At some level there must be a point where use of armies against glorified gangsters seems futile, and when that point is reached, what then is to be done?

So why then is it that this whole concept is still considered to be a good or wise thing? This is not to say terrorism does not exist, and it is not to say that it should not be stopped. At some level there must be a point where use of armies against glorified gangsters seems futile, and when that point is reached, what then is to be done? In my opinion terrorists should be tried as criminals, in order to not even legitimize the attitudes and actions shown in the way that war on terrorists does. Waging war on them simply means there will always be some masochistic dipshit wanting to fight Da Man who'll get his AK and get blown up by a million dollar missile. If there is to be an affordable and rational means to resolve the issue, then war must not be one of the options considered.

That's how I see it, what about the rest of you?

Comments

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

and can't remember precisely where I saw the term referred to as the

The what...

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

You can never defeat a tactic. But then the moniker GWOT has always been something of an unfortunate shorthand, obscuring more than it clarifies. So, you are right, eliminating terror is a fools errand.

Defeating and delegitimizing an ideology that inspires large scale, destabilizing terrorism, however, is possible. That is what we are really doing. Or, at least what we should be doing.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately in the form it's taken in the last decade terrorism blends into irregular warfare on the part of people smart enough to know they'd lose a straight-up fight and thus also smart enough to avoid such a fight in the first place. And unfortunately I can't see our support of Saudi Arabia giving any claims to delegitimize terrorism more than the air of "it's only terrorism if we declare it so".

The economic benefactors of terrorism.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

When the WTC was bombed back in '93, cooler heads were in office. There was a recognition that any step away from normalcy was exactly what terrorists wanted to see. The Bush administration and congressional reaction to the second bombing gave the perpetrators exactly what they wanted. By over-reacting, politicians basically gave up the higher ground and brought America into the basement bunker of fear and defeat.

The sincerity of Bush's rhetoric could be seen within months of 9/11 when he shut down operations against al-Qaeda and shifted focus on Iraq. Milking the unholy cow of anti-terrorist military spending is far more important than doing anything substantive to address the issue with a level head. Obama is not much better in this regard. Eisenhower was spot on when he complained about military industrialists. The nation and all within its periphery have fallen under the juggernaut of reaction.

Re: The economic benefactors of terrorism.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Thing is the USA was maintaining No-Fly Zones and bombing Iraq, whose leader made hay out of our not going after him as the propaganda version of trolling. Bush replaced sporadic, politically-motivated bombing with a sustained occupation, the USA was obsessed with that regime for a long time before the invasion.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

To effectively combat terrorism, it is necessary to adopt tactics that are most effective against them. That means mobilizing the entire population to resist the message and the actions of terrorists. The war can never be won by a small group of expensively equipped specialists, controlled by secretive government agencies with uncertain motives.

Trying terrorists as criminals would only serve to legitimize their cause, to make it impossible to resist their attacks and to waste time and money giving terrorists lengthy, expensive, highly publicized trials, few of which would return a guilty verdict, and many of which would result in ruinous lawsuits.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, treating criminals like soldiers legitimizes their cause by making them into what they emphatically are not. Those guys are criminals and thugs. Try them explicitly as criminals and it makes hollow any claim they have to be waging war against the Great Satan by the US legal system refusing to even recognize what they do as war.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

If you recognize their cause as legitimate, then I guess we must disagree.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If you mistake wanting to try them so as not to even dignify their farcical concept of a war as a war then I suppose we do disagree. There is a reason I think that conservatives in the USA are unable to understand the concept of subtlety.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for conservatives, but I will confess that I don't see the logic behind "unless we surrender to the terrorists, the terrorists would have won".

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's just me but it seems impossible for you to realize that trying them and refusing to dignify claims on their part of being soldiers is not surrender, it's treating them with contempt befitting what they are. Admittedly it's not using bombs and phallic weaponry so it may seem like surrender to people who think the only thing societies do is wage war.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Giving them a trial is dignifying their behaviour and much more. It gives the presumption of innocence to people who openly admit their violent actions and intentions to commit further violence. It accords them rights, privileges and benefits that they do not accord us. It declares that people can kill American citizens, destroy American property and wage armed conflict against the United States with no regard for international law, the laws of war or human rights in general, and that the United States will not defend itself, will not respond unless an impossible burden of proof is met, and that the United States will pay millions of dollars per terrorist, sparing no expense to buy the terrorists the best defense that money can buy. After being acquitted, the terrorists can sue the United States for inconveniencing them. It is not treating enemies with contempt; rather, it is giving greater respect and consideration to them than to their victims, past, present and future.
When confronted by an existential threat, waging war in self defense is extremely sensible. To do otherwise is surrender. If you want to get retentive about it, maybe it's appeasement. But it amounts to the same thing.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, son, it ain't dignifying it. These people think of themselves as soldiers. Put 'em on show trials and hang 'em and then indicate to them that "Your war is our hooliganism." I'm not talking fair trials here, I'm talking show trials. If you think that shit don't work, the history of the USSR shows something rather different. Trials are easy propaganda fodder and show these people they're beyond contempt.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

No one can deny the brutal efficiency of the USSR's methods, but some might quibble about the ethics and the morality of their approach.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So if we are to be a democracy, then, we must at some level accept there will be terrorism and treat it as criminality as the only war on terror that works properly is the Soviet version (the number of attempts on Hitler's life and successful, popular assassinations of Nazi officials indicate the Nazi one really doesn't work, as the only assassinations of Soviet officials under Stalinism were ones Stalin himself ordered).

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

I won't pretend to match your knowledge or admiration of Stalin's methods, but it seems to me that he was no fan of kid gloves' treatment of his enemies. Also, the circumstances of Stalin's own death aren't entirely unambiguous.