Here is an interesting effect of the Internet, I think you will agree.
The Telegraph declines to run this article, and Mark Steyn declines to change it until they would.
So, he just sticks it up at his website anyway. (Without the Internet, might he have been more pliable? Without the threat of the Internet, would Mark Steyn be such a good writer?)
Quote:
Paul Bigley can be forgiven his clumsiness: he’s a freelancer winging it. But the feelers put out by the Foreign Office to Ken Bigley’s captors are more disturbing: by definition, they confer respectability on the head-hackers and increase the likelihood that Britons and other infidels will be seized and decapitated in the future. The United Kingdom, like the government of the Philippines when it allegedly paid a ransom for the release of its Iraqi hostages, is thus assisting in the mainstreaming of jihad.
By contrast with the Fleet Street-Scouser-Whitehall fiasco of the last three weeks, consider Fabrizio Quattrocchi, murdered in Iraq on April 14th. In the moment before his death, he yanked off his hood and cried defiantly, “I will show you how an Italian dies!” He ruined the movie for his killers. As a snuff video and recruitment tool, it was all but useless, so much so that the Arabic TV stations declined to show it.
If the FCO wants to issue advice in this area, that’s the way to go: If you’re kidnapped, accept you’re unlikely to survive, say “I’ll show you how an Englishman dies”, and wreck the video. If they want you to confess you’re a spy, make a little mischief: there are jihadi from Britain, Italy, France, Canada and other western nations all over Iraq – so say yes, you’re an MI6 agent, and so are those Muslims from Tipton and Luton who recently joined the al-Qaeda cells in Samarra and Ramadi. As Churchill recommended in a less timorous Britain: You can always take one with you. If Mr Blair and other government officials were to make that plain, it would be, to use Mr Bigley’s word, “enough”. A war cannot be subordinate to the fate of any individual caught up in it.
That last sentence would make a fine Samizdata quote of the day, and I nearly posted it that way instead.
Commenters will no doubt have all kinds of things to say about Scousers, Italians, the FCO, Mr Blair, etc. But what interests me about this little circumstance is that it is yet one more straw in the wind, gently falling onto the back of the camel that is the Mainstream Media.
It just cannot be such fun being an MSM editor these days. You spike an article. But it gets ‘published’ anyway, with your spike marks on it as a badge of pride.
I can’t prove it, but I suspect the Torygraph would have run it but for the unfortunate fact that Bigley was a scouser. They fear the power of sentimentality (just as the government does), and will not run the risk of losing sales (votes) on Merseyside by not playing along.
Indeed. The ONLY rational response to such a kidnapping and murder is to publicly announce redoubled efforts to work for the violent consternation of the Islamists wishes, whatever they might be. That is the only thing that could even possibly de-motivate the enemy from the behaviour that killed the hapless Mr. Bigley. The only reply to the kidnappers should be “We have instructed our forces to redouble efforts to find you and kill you. We will try to rescue our guy if practicle but our primary objective is to kill you and anyone who supports you. Have a nice day.”
To even hint obliquely that the Islamists will find anyone from the government who will do otherwise is indeed an invitation to kidnap and murder other British people.
TO: Brian Micklethwait
RE: Target!
Mark is, once again, on target with his commentary. Too bad the Telegraph can’t see the truth of the matter, or is too ‘sensitive’.
Perhaps the editor would care to follow Senator Kerry’s approach, as published in the NYT magazine, and treat the beheading of Ken Bigley as your typical terrorist ‘nuisance’; something people would read about on a back page and say, “That’s a shame. They took out coverage of the cricket match to put that in. How annoying.”
We should all get used to this sort of thing, as it will obviously be happening every day. Neh? It’ll all be part of the the daily nuisances in our busy lives.
On the other hand, for the man about have his head cut off with a dull knife, without benefit of anesthesia or pain-killers, I doubt if he’s thinking, “This is a nuisance.”
In the Army we have a saying, “There is no such thing as a ‘limited war’ at the company level.” To anyone, and everyone, in contact with the enemy it’s a flaming mess. Hardly a nuisance.
But the major media, and Senator Kerry, would like us all to go back to sleep and let them handle it all for us poor stupid people. Unfortunately, the somnambulant senator fails to recognize that the nightmare people on the other side will not simply go to sleep or vanish as he enters his dream world.
In this world, there be tigers. And if we want to live in peace we must either domesticate them or kill them.
More on this over where I regularly blog, at….
Nuancing Nuisances
Regards,
Chuck(le)
I’ve always felt that if youre going to go out, you may as well do it with style. What do you have to lose?
What would be really quite good is if a hostage went out with a God Bless America and a demand that his death be avenged through the destruction of all such groups.
Makes for excellent TV on our end, and who is going to oppose his dying wish?
I agree with Steyn that it would be better it captives accepted that they would die and behave accordingly. But that is easy to say when you are not in that unenviable position. I think Steyn himself would pull it off, but I’m not so sure about myself.
Either way, the videos of the caged Bigley were absolutely heartbreaking, obviously the intended effect. You could fault Bigley for “helping” to produce that effect, but who knows what was done to him in preparation of these movies? Maybe his captors were nastier than Quattrocchi’s.
As usual, I find myself in agreement with Mark Steyn, due to personal conviction and as a tactical approach to thwart this plague of kidnapping, with subsequent ( and inevitable) execution. However, I also feel that unless I found myself in the pitiable situation that Mr. Bigley and his family were in, it’s impossible for me to state if I would behave differently. I do wish that the media would end their orgy of coverage regarding these revolting events, do we really need candleight vigils, and community grief sessions? I see no value in these displays, as they have zero impact on the life of the hostage and only seem to serve the perpertrators desire for world wide publicity.
Brian,
I’m posting it as my quote of the day — great idea. By the way, all the commentary I’ve seen on this vindicates your analysis. The Islamofascists have found our military too tough to deal with. News editors make a much easier target — the ones with a visceral lefty bent are, in a way, willing accomplices. When something like this happens, one or more of these moralistic morons thinks the possibility never occurred to our leadership in deciding to go to war.
Like other posters, I can’t pretend I know how I might react if faced with the hideous end that befell Mr. Bigley.
But I do know that the sort of craven, cowering response of Western “intellectuals” to Islamic terrorism is a remarkable contrast to civilisation’s response to Nazism, a mere half century ago.
Where once a nation responded to the bombing of the East End by mocking the enemy and flattening his cities threefold, we now ’empathise’ and ‘understand’ our would-be butchers.
The proper response to the murder of hostages is ridicule, contempt and calculated, terrifying, overwhelming revenge.
We are, I’m afraid, no longer the people we once were.
I quite agree that criticism of either Keith Bigley or any of his family for their conduct during this horror is heartless and unimaginative, but Steyn was actually quite careful not to do this. He targetted his criticisms at those who were no more directly suffering from this horror than he was, or for that matter than I am.
I’m not completely sure what I think about all this, so this isn’t really my analysis, more Steyn’s. Commenters have concentrated on what Steyn said, which is fine. But what interested me about this was the altered power balance between writers and MSM editors in the Internet age. My title was about that, rather than about the particular matter of how to handle kidnappings.
Okay, back to kidnapping. As to that, several have said that they hope they might have done better, i.e. like that Italian, but how can you know how you’d react, and how can you know what the exact situation was? The phrase “the reckless courage of the non-combatant” springs to my mind, as it often does with such horror stories as this.
I suspect that this heralds a change of editorial policy in the Telegraph. At least, Steyn eloquently sniped from a different side at the pretentions of the Labour government.
Even neoconservatism (a group I would prefer to see removed from power for their ability to repeat the downsides of history) with its ideological bases is better as a media vehicle than the mediocre and mainstream mud that the British government prefers to mire all newspapers and television channels in, trading opinion and dissent for *sotto voce* support or shadowboxing with silhouettes. Would anyone wish the Torygraph to devolve into some pale twin of the Times? That is the preferred goal of this government.
At one stroke, you could be losing a major voice for Eurosceptics, conservatives and libertarians. This government aims to wrest the media away from the “forces of conservatism”. Will the Barclays Brothers do them that favour?
The proper response to the murder of hostages is ridicule, contempt and calculated, terrifying, overwhelming revenge.
GCooper.
Yes, but has it not occured to you that this is what the hostage takers themselves are thinking as a response to the invasion of Iraq.
Yes, but has it not occured to you that this is what the hostage takers themselves are thinking as a response to the invasion of Iraq.
So?
Thieves steal Bigley condolence book
I can see why, following the murder of Kenneth Bigley, people are keen on revenge. However, given that a lot of jihadists are quite “suicidal” (that is to say, they are so convinced of their extreme beliefs that they are willing to die for them) i am not sure this would do much good.
Also, of course, as Paul C said above the reason why Islamic fundamentalists are acting brutally is probably because they see it as revenge for what they see as innocent people who have died in the invasion of Iraq and at the hands of pro-American/anti-fundamentalist regimes.
RC Dean:
So?
So perhaps sharing the same depraved mind set as bloodthirsty terrorists is not such a clever idea.
Paul said that if we take revenge on terrorists then we are sharing the same depraved mindset as them. I wouldn’t agree wholly [there is a difference between intiating an act of terror against civilians and retaliating against in such a way as to minimise casualties] but i see the similarities. I do sometimes wonder whether people who are most enthusiastic about the war in Iraq would, if they had been born Iraqis, be the most enthusiastic jihadists and resistence fighters
Kudos to Paul for being the first to alert us to the cycle-of-violence angle.
I am, of course, in favour of tracking the terrorists down and executing them – preferably, though not necessarily, after a trial. What I took exception to was the idea of wreaking calculated, terrifying and overwhelming revenge.
Since this seems to me to be the precise mind set of the terrorists themselves and if engaged in by both sides will precipitate even more of a moral catastrophe than already exists.
I think it might be worth wrting a couple of letters of complaint to telelgraph
mailto:dtletters@telegraph.co.uk
after all its all very well to empathise with their editors about why they didnt run the article. But at the end of the day its dangerous cowadice in the face of the emotional fascism that Britain seems to be gripped by. So put some pressure on the tele
PHG & Paul,
When faced with acts such as this, if you restrict your self out of fear of precipitting further action by the terrorists, you take the first step down the path towards legitimising hostage taking and terrorisim.
Yes there are many Jihadists willing to die for their cause but I am given to understand that the majority of them are simply young, angry and wholly duped into wasting their lives by the leaders of these organizations. I know it’s a tall order but response needs to be swift, terrifying and complete. You must remove the entire group, from leadership to the lowest bomber, to a place where they can do no further harm.
A war cannot be subordinate to the fate of any individual caught up in it.
Now there’s some ugly collectivist sentiment. Consider its implications, people.
The media war against the west
NEWS FLASH–I don’t CARE how the islamists see things. They are in the wrong. PERIOD.
It’s time to start beheading a few of THEM.
(sorry if I’m insensitive; you ought to see how mean I am in person!)
“I will show you how an Italian dies!”
Absolutely awesome.
– Josh
Andrew Robb,
“You must remove the entire group, from leadership to the lowest bomber, to a place where they can do no further harm.”
I mean, doh! if only someone in charge had thought of that before. Let’s get on with it then…
but wait… How exactly do you propose to do this? Bomb the whole village they lived in & hope you get all of ’em along with the grandmothers & babies?
…or did you have anything cleverer in mind?
Brian: newspapers are in the business of making money. I am sure that they pulled the story because they were afarid that it would have offended the delicate sensibilities of enough of their readers to cause a substantial drop in their revenue. They may have been correct, at least in the short term, and even if they were aware of the possibility of the article being published elsewhere (on Steyn’s site, in this case).
On cycle of violence: so if someone is trying to kill you, you should do nothing, lest he gets even angrier. Right.
Buried in the column is Steyn’s sterling advice for those who might visit Iraq: pack heat and be prepared to use it. If all the civilians in Iraq adopted this advice we’d see many fewer hostages taken, though perhaps not a lower civilian death rate. Hostages provide the terrorists with propaganda tools that simple dead bodies do not. For my own part, I’d much rather die in a gunfight than be taken hostage by the Islamonutters. There would always be a chance, and maybe a good one, of taking one or more of them with me.
Paul Coulam writes:
“Yes, but has it not occured to you that this is what the hostage takers themselves are thinking as a response to the invasion of Iraq.”
Precisely the pacifist, relativist claptrap that I was complaining about.
Good advice for home too.
TO: Ralf Goergens
RE: Going with Panache
“…it would be better it captives accepted that they would die and behave accordingly. But that is easy to say when you are not in that unenviable position. I think Steyn himself would pull it off, but I’m not so sure about myself.” — Ralf Goergens
It’s all a matter of having the proper perspective.
Some people fear the end. Others embrace it, when it comes. Some others rush towards it.
Personally, if you understand that it is not THE ‘end’, there’s no real problem. Except, perhaps, the means. Dull knives without benefit of anesthesia are not a ‘good’ means.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[One of the greatest blessings of virtue is the contempt of death. — Montaigne]
TO: VS
RE: It’s All a Matter of “Motivation”
“Paul said that if we take revenge on terrorists then we are sharing the same depraved mindset as them.” — VS
Paul is right. Revenge is not the proper motivation. Rather, one should be motivated by STOPPING their conduct, for the purpose of saving others.
If stopping them requires a bullet or a precision-guided munition, so be it. However, if you can stop them in another manner, just as effectively and before they can do more harm, then you should do that.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Such blather about alternative ways to face down the terrorists. As Al Zaqari says, “they think we want something from them – they are wrong, we want them dead” You can only respond in kind to that.
Chuck Pelto,
I get your point. I would do my best to face my end like a man, but as I said, I don’t know If I could do it as I think I should.
On the one hand having the time to prepare yourself mentally, it become easier to be stoic when the end comes. On the other hand you never know how they’ll treat you. Fabrizio Quattrocchi might have been lucky compared to Bigley.
Then again: I am virtuos (or hope to think I am) in my conduct, but I’m completely non-religious, so it would be ‘the’ end. So that consolation isn’t for me.
The trouble with revenge is that it’s impossible for the USA or British forces to be ruthless enough to do it properly. A historically proven use of revenge: for every one of your people they kill, publically execute ten of their people. Preferably ten notables so that they will be recognised by the onlookers, but if you know who did the deed, their relatives should be first in the queue. This is known to be effective in subjugating rebellious populations.
If you aren’t willing to be that cruel, if your intended outcome is not a subjugated populace but a free one, then revenge will be ineffective because it will look half-hearted.
While I was married to my (English) ex husband, he travelled quite a bit, including to some dodgy areas where the threat of him being taken hostage was a distinct possibility. We had a long talk, only once, about my concerns and what he wanted me to do if the worst ever happened. He told me that he specifically did not want me pleading for his life, cooperating with anyone else pleading for his life, or giving any “weepy interviews”. He told me to consider him dead, and do nothing in any way, shape or form, whether ransom or anything else, to get him back. He said, “If you do that, and I find out about it, when I come home, I’ll divorce you”.
I found that incredibly cold when it was happening, but the more that I’ve thought about it, the more sense I can see in it. Pleading demonstrably does no good and is surely used as a propaganda tool. Ransom encourages. The view that adults who willingly go to places where there is that sort of danger are on their own and had better have some sort of serious self defence plan worked out is the only logical view that I can see.
And yeah, we got divorced, anyway, but it wasn’t because of that!
TO: Ralf Goergens
RE: Virtuous Me
“I am virtuos (or hope to think I am) in my conduct, but I’m completely non-religious, so it would be ‘the’ end. So that consolation isn’t for me.” — Ralf Goergens
Well, we could eat up Samiz’ bandwidth for the next year on that business.
Suffice it to say, having been ‘saved’ from immediate snuffings on a couple of occasions, I’m completely confident in what happens when I finally get out of this venue. And another one may have just occured, less than an hour ago; damned C130 was ENTIRELY TOO LOW on final approach. I could have downed it with a well thrown rock, had I been ready.
I haven’t had my 15 minutes of fame yet, and I don’t care for it coming from a C130 crashing into my house while I’m enjoying a cigar on the balcony.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Life is boot camp. We are all expected to go out and be heroes.]
I’m with Wild Pegasus.
Awesome is the word. Utterly awe inspiring. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head all day.
A_t,
My point was that you cannot do this in half measures. The current problems with terrorism are amplified by every nation that negotiates with hostage takers, by every marcher in a pasifist demonstration and any voice of discontent among the nations under attack. Even a post such as your helps them.
Do you think the terrorists are stupid? They will feign outrage over any instance of what the media now calls “collateral damage” but in reality if they thought that any western nation would actually lower themselves as far as to bomb a village like you describe no one would claim responsibility for any further attacks that might occur.
The west plays right along with their game, we let them commit horrible acts and we respond with strong words and hamstrung actions. We pander to them and we pander to the culture that supports them under the guise of forgein policy.
The proper response to the murder of hostages is ridicule, contempt and calculated, terrifying, overwhelming revenge.
GCooper.
Absolutely correct. I recently read an article in the Times where they contacted Zarqawi’s wife and family and tried to interview them. The fact that this is possible disgusted me. Why aren’t they in custody and being slowly tortured? Of course, we can’t cause it’ll inflame muslim opinion or cause of guilt by association and various other soppy arguments. I bet she’s in touch with him, and I bet the whole crappy little village where she lives supports him. Clearly a target for the B52s I think.
The implications? Sure, in a war, some innocent people will get killed and whilst that is regrettable, it is also inevitable. That is the reality of war. Get over it.
Also, like so many of the brain-dead variety of libertarians, you probably think you have a right to leave your lights on at night during an air raid… but you do not because what would be a right under normal conditions is trumped by the right to life of others when there is a war on.
So you live by a Air Force base? Maybe the flyboy wanting to buzz you or something. 🙂
On cycle of violence: so if someone is trying to kill you, you should do nothing, lest he gets even angrier. Right.
No, the point about cycle of violence is that if someone *isn’t* trying to kill you, but is surrounded by people who want him to join their organisations devoted to killing you, then killing his family probably isn’t the smartest way of discouraging him from doing so.
Believing that cycles-of-violence exists doesn’t stop you from also believing that arresting (shooting/beheading/whatever) the leaders of the organisations devoted to killing you is a good plan.
john b? The same john b who infests biased BBC (Link)? I thought I recognised those demented left-wing ideas.
Yup, demented leftwing ideas like “killing people’s families may well turn them against you”. What a crazy communist loon I am.
Thought so!
Julian Morrison points out that, to stop a resistance/terrorist movement by force and force along, an army might have to kill 10 people for every one of their people/allies killed.
At the risk of invoking Godwin’s law, we know exactly which WW2 dictatorship used this tactic!
Do we really want to be like them?
The aim, on (most) segments of both left and right (whether they initially opposed the war or supported it) should be to build a free, prosperous and peaceful Iraq. Some military action against ex-Ba’athists and religious fanatics may well be needed to do this; but this does not mean that we should attack civilians knowingly.
If people consider it justified to kill 10 Iraqi civilians for every American murdered, then I would see that as morally outrageous. It would imply that Arab lives are somehow worthless compared with those of white people – a racist sentiment I would have no truck with.
snide,
You think it “brain-dead” to point out statements that implicitly advocate the government (that entity which wages war) being more important than the individual (the government subjects caught up in it)? I’m unsure of your political leanings, but I find support of suppressing my freedom at ANY time contemptible. Rights don’t just go away when you want them to.
I’ll leave my lights on when I damn well please to and if a neighbor wants to try and strop me, he’d better at least have the balls to force me in person to turn them off rather than have the state to it by proxy. My rights come into clear view at that moment when the aggressor in the situation becomes apparent.
Gcooper:
“Where once a nation responded to the bombing of the East End by mocking the enemy and flattening his cities threefold, we now ’empathise’ and ‘understand’ our would-be butchers.”
But this is a very good example of the dangers of retaliation. My understanding is that the initial bombing of the East End was basically accidental and in fact contrary to the orders which had been given to the Luftwafe. The blitz proper only began after we retaliated by bombing Berlin. The rest is history – hundreds of thousands of civiian deaths and the destruction of many of Britain and Europe’s finest cities. It is at least possible that much of that would have been avoided if both we and the Germans had not been sucked into a cycle of retaliation.
The terrorists are killing Iraqis also. How often have we heard about a bomb at a recruitment center for the Iraqi police or military. I don’t believe Julian Morrison was suggesting that we kill Iraqi civillians and I agree that such a thing would do no good.
We are not fighting the Iraqi people, we are fighting a small group of misguided young men and women and those that lead them. Many of whom entered Iraq from other nations at the beginning of the war when we failed to close Iraq’s borders.
Andrew Robb’s comment above is right. A lot of the people dying at the hands of the religious fanatics are Iraqis. But that doesn’t get covered in our news media. A case of media double-standards i think
Julius writes:
“My understanding is that the initial bombing of the East End was basically accidental and in fact contrary to the orders which had been given to the Luftwafe. The blitz proper only began after we retaliated by bombing Berlin. The rest is history – hundreds of thousands of civiian deaths and the destruction of many of Britain and Europe’s finest cities. It is at least possible that much of that would have been avoided if both we and the Germans had not been sucked into a cycle of retaliation. ”
Ah those peace-loving Nazis, eh? They’d never have hurt anyone if only we hadn’t been so beastly to them.
I suppose we shall just have to assume you’ve never heard of Guernica.
Andrew Robb writes:
“Many of whom entered Iraq from other nations at the beginning of the war when we failed to close Iraq’s borders.”
Precisely. Which is why retaliation should be swiftly and terminally applied to the sources of this evil. Starting with the notorious madrasas in Pakistan and states like Jordan and Syria, which cultivate and export psychotics like al-Zarqawi.
That said, foreign insurgents could not operate were they not supported by many Iraqis. They, too, are legitimate targets.
In reponse to GCooper, i agree that the massadras in Pakistan need to be closed down. This is something their own govt has to do.
However, for the West to do so would embroil us in further difficulties as we would have the danger of the Musseraf govt falling and a right-wing clerical-reactionary Islamic regime coming to power in a country of 130m+ people. We would also be interfering in the internal affairs of another country and that would be bound to cause a bad reaction.
How would Americans have liked it if the UK had bombed Boston because lots of Irish-Americans there supported the IRA?
VS writes:
“i agree that the massadras in Pakistan need to be closed down. This is something their own govt has to do.”
And if they wont, then we should do it for them.
Fifty years of mealy-mouthed acceptance of terrorism as a viable political method is what has brought us to this position.
If people consider it justified to kill 10 Iraqi civilians for every American murdered, then I would see that as morally outrageous. It would imply that Arab lives are somehow worthless compared with those of white people – a racist sentiment I would have no truck with.
VS – Newsflash. Arabs are white people. So you’d be outraged by the 10:1 thing, because it would imply, in morally bankrupt fashion, that white people are somehow worthless compared with white people…
WTF?
Al Maviva – Newsflash: whether Semites, including Arabs & Jews, count as “white” is very evidently a matter of opinion. Personally I would be more inclined to consider a Bangladeshi “white” than an Arab.
As a friend of mine is fond of saying,
“We’re all pink on the inside.”
Gcooper refers to “50 yrs of mealy-mouthed acceptance of terrorism”. what is he referring to?
islamic terrorism only really dates from the 80s, when it started in Lebanon/Israel. It also occurred in Afghanistan [where the CIA and bin Laden were allies in fighting against the pro-Soviet govt]
VS writes:
“Gcooper refers to “50 yrs of mealy-mouthed acceptance of terrorism”. what is he referring to?”
What GCooper is referring to is the refusal to stand up against terrorism in all its forms.
Each capitulation encourages the next outrage.
Islamist terrorists read history too, you know.
I feel a quote from Bomber Harris coming on in view of the earlier talk of the perils of retaliation :-
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a dozen other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”
As an anecdote, the guy sitting next to me here at work worked in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and he is convinced that the Iraqis themselves
a) absolutely detested Saddam, and would do anything to get rid of him
b) are fairly secular, as Arabs go – they liked the booze for example. Apparently Iraq has quite a brewing industry in fact!
c) he is absolutely convinced that the current troubles are caused by a tiny segment of the Iraqi population
Only anecdotal, of course, but big pictures are made up of little anecdotes. What do you think a journo sees when scouring Iraq, after all?
You see, the reason why I asked what you were referring to is that 50yrs is far too long ago to merely be referring to modern islamist terror.
You may well be referring to terrorism of other forms in the past that are now viewed by people as freedom fighting. For example, EOKA in Cyprus were seen as terrorists. yet, given that britain was ruling cyprus against the will of the Greek majority, were they really freeodm fighters?
Were the pro-American Contras in Nicaragua terrorists or were they, in Regaan’s words, “freedom fighters” like the US’s “founding fathers”?
What about state terrorism? Is the USSR and China’s persecution of their inhabitants ‘terrorism’? If so, what about the anti-communist “white terrors” imposed by the govt of Indonesia against their people, or the actions of the Shah’s Iran or of the military dictatorships in S America?
GCooper’s black-and-white simplistic world view is the mirror image of that of the Islamist/Arab nationalist terrorists of modern Palestine or Iraq
Side issue: it is common for most news organisations like CNN and so forth to forbid their reporters to carry guns, lest they be treated as a “legitimate target” by terror groups, etc. That argument strikes me as a bit weak given recent events. I have even heard that one of the Fox News guys carries a gun.
Julian Morrison, yes it was most unfortunate the East End got bombed. Yes, if only we had given the corporal with the silly moustache what he wanted, I am sure it would have come right in the end and we’d now be living in a libertarian paradise.
Nurse!
To the cycle of violence folk, I would point out a simple fact: kidnappinigs happened for years before Gulf War 1&2.
“To the cycle of violence folk, I would point out a simple fact: kidnappinigs happened for years before Gulf War 1&2.”
Aaah, yes, of course we all remember several foreigners a week being kidnapped regularly prior to this war. And the whole beheading business too; just normal. Been going on for years; every tourist in the Middle-east knew it was a significant danger. The war didn’t change a thing, nono.
[sticks head back in sand]
I’d agree that the invasion’s only one of the many reasons these kidnappings are currently taking place, but to argue against
“we shouldn’t indiscriminately bomb villages to try & get terrorists, for it will set more people against us”
with “well, they used to kidnap a few people for ransom in Yemen before, so the cycle of violence existeth not, & we might as well just kick ass”
doesn’t really hold water.
That may not be what you’re saying; feel free to clarify if so.
A_T, what about the bombing of a site packed with tourists in Egypt in the late 1980s? From my reading of history, violent islamists don’t seem to need many excuses to carry out violent acts. They want to expunge the ME of all non-islamist influence, which is neither possible, desirable, nor just.
Whenever I hear the cycle of violence argument I smell appeasement, and no A_T, I am not branding you as some sort of Chomskyite, which is libellous, but I do not buy the idea that westerners would be able to move around the ME having a swell time if only that thick Texan and awful Mr Blair had not interfered. Get real.
The only “provocation” they can justly claim is the Abu Graib situatioin, but that doesn’t even begin to compare with what we have found about mass graves left by Saddam’s regime.
rgds
VS writes:
“GCooper’s black-and-white simplistic world view is the mirror image of that of the Islamist/Arab nationalist terrorists of modern Palestine or Iraq”
Thank you for the association – a suggestion as arrogant as it is facile.
Your straining after comparisons with statist violence and oppression is absurd. The clearest examples of successful terrorist butchery paying dividends are just over the water in Northern Ireland, where Messrs Adams, McGuinness and the rest of their Irish thugs are living proof of its efficacy in the face of appeasers. The elevation of the grizzly murderer Arafat into an icon of the Left is another. Gaddafi is a third.
This broken down nag of an argument – ‘who’s really the terrorist?’ – should be sent to the glue factory without further delay. Along with all the rest of the moral relativist codswallop.
Zarqawi, bin Laden and their kind are terrorists because they have observed that, by and large, terrorism works when your enemy is a paper tiger. Had they learned another lesson from history – that terrorism never succeeds – the world would be a far safer place.
And yes, some things really are that black and white – whatever deconstructionists and Gramscians might pretend.
A_t writes:
“but to argue against
“we shouldn’t indiscriminately bomb villages to try & get terrorists, for it will set more people against us”
Forgive me if my attention wandered, but where has anyone actually suggested this? Perhaps you would remind us?
The careless GCooper writes:
” …grizzly murderer Arafat…”
A bit ursine he may be, but I actually meant to type ‘grisly’.
My apologies.
I don’t see why GCooper sees comparisons with ‘statist violence’ as ‘absurd’. After all, why some terrorists are considered freedom fighters by their supporters and by 3rd parties is because there is no peaceful and constitutional means of struggle they can use.
Now Adams & McGuinness are terrorists because modern Britain is a democracy and they can campaign for Irish unity through the ballot box. On the other hand, you could say EOKA in Cyprus were freedom fighters who used ‘terror’ since there was no democratic method for gaining independence
If GCooper had lived in occupied Europe during the war would he have considered the resistance fighters in France, Poland etc terrorists?
” I do not buy the idea that westerners would be able to move around the ME having a swell time if only that thick Texan and awful Mr Blair had not interfered.”
Nor do I, but @ the same time don’t try & tell me you wouldn’t have felt safer as a tourist in the ME prior to the invasion of Iraq. It’s made things demonstrably more dangerous for any westerner or non-arab.
I know the theory is that the situation will improve in the long run, & perhaps it will; i’m not predicting doom, & certainly not hoping for it, but for now at least, i’d say you could draw a fairly clear line between the invasion of iraq & the current beheadings. Note too that I am not suggesting that the US & Britain are somehow morally responsible for said beheadings, but just as they will take the credit if the whole situation resolves itself in a pleasing manner, for now they must accept that their decisions & actions have brought about the current (dangerous) situation which Westerners face in Iraq.
Gcooper on bombing villages to get terrorists:
“Forgive me if my attention wandered, but where has anyone actually suggested this? Perhaps you would remind us?”
Well, in this thread you have suggested “mocking the enemy and flattening his cities threefold” & advocated “calculated, terrifying, overwhelming revenge”. Others have suggested a “swift, terrifying and complete” response.
Now, none of these phrases sound enormously like code for targetted assassinations to me; “overwhelming revenge” doesn’t sound like a few precision sniper bullets.. it sounds like b52s dropping high explosives. I may have misinterpreted the words written here, but I doubt it.
The West certainly has a history of resorting to tactics like this in order to avoid military casualties, & one dead British or American soldier is far more newsworthy back at home than (eminently deniable, & who can verify? oops, sorry you can’t visit there; too dangerous) Iraqi civilian casualties.
I have absolutely no problem with ‘massive retaliation’ against head-chopping cowards provided it only kills them. What I do have a problem with is massive retaliation which kills people who had nothing to do with the head-chopping. By the same logic, the police could just blow up a mass murderer’s appartment building rather than risk their lives storming it, & write off his neighbours’ lives as collateral damage.
& before you bring up the bombing of some German or Japanese city, the big difference there was that the people we were bombing were part of a larger system which aimed to defeat us. Most Iraqi civilians we kill aren’t.
So, in summary, not opposed to fighting terrorists; just asking for a little restraint from the ‘massive retaliation’ posse; not only is it the decent thing to do, it also makes sense in terms of our own long term outlook, & not having too many crazies who want us dead.
Having spent a year in Iraq, I have witnessed what occurs there, and have a slightly different outlook on what is going on there. The entire ways of life for those people is so completely different that we as modernized, buy our bottled water, sip Starbucks Western civilization can’t even comprehend what these people do and are capable of doing. Kidnapping’s, rape, torture, and beheading’s are a part of life there. It is like looking both ways before crossing the street is to us. This way of life produces completely different people. You can’t expect them to react to anything the same way we would.
Also, whoever posted that Zarqawi said “We want them dead” was right. He is not trying to free Iraq or anything. Just kill American’s. Another thing I see posted that I would like to correct is people blaming all this on Iraqi terrorists. Iraqi terrorists (the few of them that there ARE!) aren’t the problem. They are barely trained, blow themselves up setting IED’s, can’t shoot and show no knowlage of small unit tactics. There are kids back home playing paintball that would do better than these people. The main problem, the one people seem to be forgetting and blaming on the IRAQI’S, is foreign terrorist’s. Foriegn terrorist’s are FLOCKING to Iraq. Witness the amount of increased activity along the Syrian border. The all used to cross and go to Fallujah (where I was) or Ramadi, Najaf, etc, but now they are limited on places to hide. Also, the Iraqi people are getting tired of terrorists killing and threatening them.
Did You Know: Terrorists are known to break into a house, line the family inside up in front of the window, stand behind them and open fire on Coalition Forces??
Naturally, CF return fire, thereby killing the family. Who is at fault?? Fault the troops for protecting themselves?? Fault the family for not resisting (thereby ensuring their own death by another means), or fault the terrorist for using the best tactics available to him to fight a vastly overwhelming force?? I say fault the media that makes using these scare tactics a success. But that is another topic, back to the one at hand, whoever YOU fault, the Iraqi people have been tired of it for a long time. They may have been to frightened to act on it for quite some time, but they HAVE been fed up with it. Before we left, we were seeing more and more of the Iraqi people themselves actively helping us. To win in Iraq we need to:
1) STAY THERE AND FINISH!! Regardless if you agree with being there, WE ARE THERE!! To leave now would waste what we have accomplished.
2) Continue to show the Iraqi people that it IS possible to live without the iminent fear that someone will kick in your door and kill your whole family because your child waved to U.S. Forces.
3) Continue to turn over responsibilty to Iraqi’s. Let THEM patrol, let THEM be seen catching terrorist’s and finding weapon’s cache’s.
4) Stop catering to terrorist propaganda. They post all this stuff BECAUSE we react. The media tries to make people that CHOP PEOPLE’S HEADS OFF(!!) look pitiable!!! Doesn’t anyone see anything wrong with this?? How can ANYONE sympathize with these people??
Anyway, my lunchbreak is over, so please feel free to send comments, flames, whatever, to:
sfinktur@hotmail.com
I don’t mind, I know how to block people if I need to, and hotmail is free to get a new account anyway. Do your worst.
Later,
Cadaver