Our Enemy

Perhaps the best-put explanation of why we cannot confine our offensives to Al Qaeda alone:

I believe it's short-sighted to ignore American policy and globalization as a factor in how people respond when they're at the gunpoint of the American Empire. It's easy, when one is born into the ruling class of 20th century North America, to rationalize suicide bombing as the brainwashing techniques of religious fundamentalists. It's easy to come up with a simple explanation that doesn't require the analysis of our actions and the understanding of the people we are bombing. It's easy to drop smart bombs on the neighborhoods of suspected terrorists and to send our own poor people to fight the poor people of our colonies, than to concentrate on the natural consequences of our systematic economic exploitation of human life.

At least I do agree with Warren's assertation that we cannot draw neat lines. It's not as simple as "you're either with us, or you're against us."

- Aaron Winborn

"The USS New Jersey started hurling 16-inch shells into the mountains above Beirut, in World War II style, as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll prior to an invasion. What we tend to overlook in such situations is that other people will react much as we would."

- Colin Powell, "My American Journey" (from his memoir, writing about the American invasion of Lebanon in the 1980's)

Do you think suicide bombing of innocent civilians is okay, or not?

No, I don't. Neither do I believe non-suicide bombing of innocent civilians is okay.

Aaron,

Do you mean that it's not ok to ever fight a war that might involve collateral innocent civilian casualties?

Or are you saying that we have intentionally targeted innocent civilians as our primary goal?

Or are you trying to equivocate to make an invalid point?

Also, there's a big difference between ignoring American policy and disagreeing with assertions that changing our policy to appease terrorists and potential terrorists should be the major element of our response.

Do you think you understand the people who attacked us?

If so, what do you think we should do to avoid more of the same, and worse?

(Quoting Gil)
>Do you mean that it's not ok to ever fight a war that might involve collateral innocent civilian casualties?

Let me rephrase. I believe that some people believe fighting such a war is justified. I believe it's justified as well, on some levels. For instance, for the purpose of perpetuating the fear required for a people to continue to uphold the government of a colonial empire.

I believe there is no real humane justification for war of any kind, however. The closest justification would be to expel invaders from one's villages and towns, such as what we have seen historically in Poland during WWII, in Scotland during the rebellions of the 14th century, the West Bank during the Intafadas, Beirut during Israeli occupation, Belfast throughout British rule, and Boston after the Stamp Tax Act. Even in those instances, however, I believe it should be the last resort. And I likewise believe that a person's conditions need to be dismal at best to drive one to suicide.

>Or are you saying that we have intentionally targeted innocent civilians as our primary goal?

This is always an unspoken goal in any war. In fact, it's about the only goal in war. In war, we stop calling people humans, and begin dividing them into "innocent civilians" and "military targets." In neither case are they any longer human. In both cases, they are nearly always poor people, who are always the targets of war. And it's nearly always poor people on the front lines as well.

Killing and maiming people is foremost and always the primary goal of a war. That is necessary to instill the fear required for the other, stated, goals. Firstly, it is required that the poor people fighting your war believe the poor people they're killing deserve to be killed. They are twisted or misguided minions of an evil madman hell bent on killing and raping our women and children. Thus, it's justified to kill them. Secondly, it is required to kill and maim enough of them so that they will surrender. Or if they don't then just keep killing until there is no more enemy.

It doesn't matter a flying fuck if you're killing civilians or not. When it comes down to it, they're all just people. And the ones in the military are usually there because they're too poor to do anything else. And they all have civilian families who will mourn them after they're dead, and many of them will afterwards join the military or become a guerilla fighter to avenge the deaths of their loved ones. So they all end up being equally valid "targets," no matter which side of a war you're on.

>Or are you trying to equivocate to make an invalid point?

I believe that we're discussing a complex issue. David asked a question that tried to focus my beliefs into a simple yes or no question, and I don't believe that can be answered as such.

As I said, I don't think bombing anyone is "okay". However, it is always justified. I just don't believe in most of the justification for war of any kind. However, I do side more with the oppressed, even though I believe that Ghandi and MLK had more sustainable answers than did Michael Collins and Bin Laden. I find it easier when forced to take sides to take the side of the human rather than the side of the dollar.

>Also, there's a big difference between ignoring American policy and disagreeing with assertions that changing our policy to appease terrorists and potential terrorists should be the major element of our response.

I accept that. I do not, and have never, asserted that we should change any policy in order to appease terrorists or "potential terrorists". At a fundamental level, I don't believe there is even a "we" to change "our policy".

The Bush-Ladens have their own policies and agendums, and I don't agree with them. Millions of people support them, and I don't agree with them either. I have my own policies and agendums, and I don't expect anyone to agree or follow them.

The USA is a myth. There is no USA. There is no government. There are no nations, no borders. There are people, doing what people do, for whatever justification they believe. Collectively, we might believe this side of the sand is Israel, and that side is Jordan, but ultimately, it's just sand.

Okay, enough philosophizing. In the consensual reality I still find myself, albeit unwillingly, a part of, there is this war machine doing what it does best, and I find it necessary to struggle against it. If I cannot convince people from killing other people in my name, then I must do what I can to force them to stop.

(continued in follow-up)

(continued from previous post)

(quoting Gil)

>Do you think you understand the people who attacked us?

Depends on what, specifically, you're speaking about. I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that you're referring to the Saudi's who hijacked those jets a few years ago and flew them into a couple of American buildings.

What I understand about them is that they were financed by a former CIA recruit whose family has financially supported the Bush family for a decade or two. Beyond that, it's anyone's guess. I'd probably mostly agree with you -- they were radical fundamentalists who were brainwashed into believing that if they killed themselves while launching a massive attack on the "evil American empire", they would be guaranteed a place, if not in paradise, then at least in history.

At the same time, I do not believe those are the people we have been killing in Afghanistan or Iraq. We have been killing the poor who have already struggled through decades of war. As a man raised poor, it is not difficult for me to understand their plight.

>If so, what do you think we should do to avoid more of the same, and worse?

I am doing my best to avoid more of the same, and worse. Bloodshed begets bloodshed. It's an endless cycle. The concept that we can fight a war of terror to end terror is Orwell at his best.

To end killing is as simple as not taking up a gun or a knife or a bomb in the first place.

Our State thrives on fear. "They" are going to attack us. We don't know where "they'll" strike next. Give up your civil liberties so we can fight "them" more easily. Let's kill "them" before "they" kill us. For just $29.99, you can help make the world a safer place. In fact, if you don't pay us, we'll put you in jail. And if we conscript you to fight our war, or if you're so poor you can't see any other choice, you can go do the killing for us.

- Aaron Winborn

"I tell you a truth, liberty is the best of all things, my son, never live under any slavish bond."

- William Wallace

If you're going to quote Orwell as a pacifist, then it's worth reading this:

5. PACIFISM The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers have written in praise of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty. The mistake was made of pinning this emotion to Hitler, but it could easily be retransfered.