As I was waiting in the RT studio this morning, to comment on the PACE considerations of the Marty report (which ended up being adopted, by an overwhelming majority vote), I heard about a poll they were conducting in the aftermath of the Domodedovo Airport bombing. Something like 60% of the respondents said they did not believe terrorism could be defeated.
They are right. Because, you see, terrorism can't be defeated. But terrorists can.
The purpose of terrorism is to effect coercion through instilling fear (Latin: terror). Governments routinely use coercion, and particularly bad ones believe that the only reason people obey laws is the fear of consequences (oderint dum metuant and all). How is that not terrorism? Well, there's an element of hypocrisy involved, to be sure. Just as printing money at home is a felony, but when the Federal Reserve does it it's called "quantitative easing."
There is one distinction, I suppose. Very few governments resort to arbitrary arrests and executions (and once they do, they usually aren't around for long thereafter). Terrorists kill randomly. By doing so, they don't just challenge government's monopoly of force, but strike at the very heart of a government's existence. The primary purpose of a state, you'll recall, is to provide security. This is why governments the world over have a rule not to negotiate with terrorists. If they do, they undermine their own raison d'etre.
Of course, if the terrorists are fighting for something that the government can afford to give up, accommodation eventually happens. And let's not forget that in today's world, you're only a terrorist if you dare attack the "good guys" (i.e. us). If you are bombing, killing or maiming "them" (i.e. others, the designated enemy), you become a "guerrilla" or "rebel" or "freedom fighter." If you secure support of a powerful state, you can even carve out a state of your own, declare yourself prime minister or president, and make quite a comfortable living practicing criminal activities with impunity.
Though nothing has been confirmed just yet, the prime suspects in the bombing of Domodedovo airport yesterday are members of a jihadist organization from the north Caucasus. Russophobes of all stripes will no doubt suggest that the best course for Moscow would be to withdraw from the area. These are the same people who would never contemplate, much less condone, American withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan - even though these are countries half the world away that Washington chose to invade, while Chechnya is part of Russia's own territory.
They also ignore the fact that Moscow actually did leave the Chechens alone. Russian troops retreated from the region in 1996, leaving it at the mercy of jihadists. Did they settle down and build a peaceful, prosperous nation? No - they made Chechnya into a black hole of jihadist banditry, and began invading the surrounding areas.
If the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing humanity he did not exist, then the greatest service Bush the Lesser ever did to the Prince of Lies was invading Iraq. By doing so, he helped create a perception that there was no such thing as jihad, and that the principal dynamo of Muslim grievance was the occupation. Yes, it plays a part. And so does the existence of Israel (the "occupation of Palestine" actually refers not to the territories taken in 1967 from Jordan and Egypt - but to the existence of Israel, period). But where was Israel in 1453, when Mehmet II sacked Constantinople? Where was "Crusader aggression" in 732, when Charles Martel stopped the Muslims at Tours? That, by the way, is in France - a long way from Arabia.
We're looking at two different things here, then. One is the imperial impulse in Washington (or London before that), which results in murderous overseas adventures and the backlash they inspire. The other is the commandment to the followers of Mohammed's teachings to spread the faith by fire and sword and slay the infidel wherever they find them. Many people ignore one of these aspects, trying to explain the world strictly through the prism of the other. That's a mistake.
This is why Afghanistan is not Kosovo, and why Chechnya is not Iraq. Picking a fight halfway around the world is not the same as having to defend your own life, at your own doorstep. Of course, in the world according to Emperors on the Potomac, the latter is a crime and the former is statesmanship.
In the ensuing confusion, jihad advances.
8 comments:
It is a bit of an assumption that (genuine) Jihadists and not say some patsies of a belligerent Western government exploded the bomb in Moscow's airport. Another reason why terrorism cannot be defeated is that it is to a large extent a state sponsored activity, and the main sponsors are powerful Western states. After all, it was Jimmy Carter who inaugurated "terrorism" on July 3, 1979 by authorizing $500 million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia. The result, in Zbigniew Brzezinski's words, was "a few stirred up Muslims" -- meaning the Jihadists.
Given the extent of the involvement of "Afghans" (veterans of the jihad there) in Chechnya, I would argue the entire Chechen jihad is a Western proxy war on Russia, in which actual Chechens have long since ceased to matter.
I've long claimed that it was a conceit of Imperial policymakers that Islam and jihad made nifty tools for subverting Europe, Russia, China, India, etc. This conceit is not just mistaken, but criminally idiotic.
@Gray Falcon
It most definitely is a western backed an orchestrated proxy war given the fact that terrorist started coming into the region starting in 89, most of the foreign fighters in Bosnia came from Chechnya and by sheer coincidence exactly matches the scenario of what happened pending and during the outbreak of WW2.
In fact there is an even more striking scenario further back in history for western support and sponsorship of international Marxist terrorism mostly emanating from the Pale of Settlement and Southern Russia.
One of the first acts of the de-facto separatist regime was to travel to England and sign a number of agreements relating to Caspian oil development market and the operation of several British charity organisations that Moscow has linked to British intelligence covert support of Chechen militants like The Halo Trust and Islamic Relief.
No surprise that the exiled Oligarchs linked to support of Chechen terrorism and international terrorist themselves operate and are located in England with ties to British intelligence involved in recruiting Muslims during the 90’s to train and finance Muslims to fight in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Kashmir through the British intelligence linked terrorist organisation Al-Muhajiroun.
Before you wrote that if I wrote to Raimando you would fast track my message to him.
Will I use his email that is posted on the antiwar site?
http://antiwar.com/who.php
I will send the email under the title Chechen 9/11 so you know which one is mine.
Yes, it's Brzezinski's idea to use Islamic extremism to undermine Russia, and then, ideally, split it up into 3 or more parts to extract its vast natural resources. If you want to eat a cake, you have to slice it into smaller pieces.
Like the Bosnians, KLA, Uighers, etc the entire Chechen movement is on the payroll of various British, US, EU and Soros sponsored NGO’s and organisation who run there propaganda websites, World Congress and travel, health care and other expenses.
Ilyas Khamzatovich Akhmadov who has been given asylum in America is a National Endowment of Democracy scholar with full financial and other benefits supported by the Brzezinski clan in the US who recently presented his recent book in Washington DC Chechen Struggle: Independence Won And Lost.
http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1295902986/last-1295902986/Ilyas+Akhmadov+%28exiled+foreign+minister%29+releases+NED+funded+book
"I'm not exaggerating when I say that one of the happiest days of my life was when I called Ilyas to tell him that he would be able to stay in America," - Zbigniew Brzezinski
In fact all the NGO’s operating in the North Caucasus excluding the Jihadist front ones are financed by the same mother organisations and individuals that operated in the Balkans (NED, Soros, HRW, etc)
Most of the propaganda stories seem to be lifted from the Balkan against the Serbs including the ever changing death toll which in the aftermath of the Beslan massacre was routinely reported at an impossible 250,000 even citied in Channel 4’s interview with Basayeav in 2005 to now over 100,000 which be sheer coincidence is the same numbers cited as being killed in the Bosnian war and the mass rape myth.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3267683.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War
@Gray Falcon
So what email address should I use?
jack, those are indeed too many "coincidences" to be coincidental.
You can use the address posted on the page you linked earlier. CC Tom, the letters editor.
Yes, believe it or not, I have thought sometime in the past how the official death toll figures in Bosnia and Chechnya shared a nearly identical history.
Ronald Reagan openly used "Terrorism" by any definition in Nicaragua, as was earlier the case in Guatemala as well.
The latter was engineered by Bernays among others.
Churchill earlier even used the term in advocating the British gassing of Kurdish villages.
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