Rounding up the Snakes on a Plane

posted by The Vidiot @ 6:47 PM Permalink

What the Terrorists Want

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

The article has a run down on all the latest 'terrerist' events, I recommend you read the whole thing. I'd like to add

Iran's Mideast influence boosted by "war on terror"

Iran's standing in the Middle East has been bolstered by President George W Bush's "war on terror" and its power will continue to grow unless stability is restored to its neighbors, a top think tank said on Tuesday.

London's Royal Institute for International Affairs said wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and with Lebanon's Hizbollah had put Iran "in a position of considerable strength."

"There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East," the RIIA said in a report on the region.

"The United States, with coalition support, has eliminated two of Iran's regional rival governments -- the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in April 2003 -- but has failed to replace either with coherent and stable political structures."

Which brings me to a larger point. I'll start with Hezbollah.

Only 4 countries in the world outside of the US and Israel think Hezbollah is a terrorist organization.

Hezbollah is an umbrella group that has political, military, humanitarian, religious and guerilla factions ('terrerists' is just too polarizing to use for this discussion), think IRA rather than AQ.

If we can change the discussion from 'us' v. 'them' to 'reasonable factions on both sides can have mutual grounds' there might be a solution that is permanent rather than 'final.'

Refusing to negotiate and continued violations of the current treaty are not a viable path; It's obvious that an eye for an eye eventually leaves everyone blind.

Once you demonize and label 'evil' you have reduced whatever group, faction and /or country to subhuman. After that you can justify anything.

And that's just what this misAdmin is doing with everyone they disagree with. They refuse to negotiate with Iran, with North Korea, with Syria, even though all those countries have expressed interest in negotiation.

Maybe it's just a ploy by the 'axis of evil' ... but if you are talking it gives a chance for cooler heads to prevail. All of those countries have the same internal debates we have. All of these countries have reasonable and unreasonable factions.

My humble offering: Talk to each other; Don't demand someone give up their only bargaining chip before they negotiate; Listen to what they have to say and especially to the subtext.

The majority of the people in every country just want to be left alone to pursue their lives in peace. They want to do well by their children, and want their children to be able to do a bit better than they did.

We might disagree on what this consists of and how this can happen, but by talking to each other, leader to leader, and even more effectively, person to person ...

We Can Make It If We Try 3:38 Sly & The Family Stone