All well and good, but what are we to do about it.
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael G. McCarthy" <mgmccarthy@...>
To: <ev_update@...>
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 9:45 PM
Subject: [ev_update] Terror's awful logic
FWIW, this column is the closest yet to my own opinion
Terror's awful logic
Column by Michael Kelly
(former reporter for The Cincinnati Post, is now editor of
the Atlantic Monthly.)
This is the end logic of terror. The long age of imperialism bequeathed to
this century a world full of questions of who wronged whom, and who stole
whose land, and what should be done. Those questions, far from finding
resolution in the half-peace of the Cold War's aftermath, roil ever more.
Absent the relative stability imposed by the war of the giants, the
grievances of those upon whom the giants acted out their territorial
ambitions have much more room to grow.
In theory, this is not a bad thing. But there are two great problems. The
first is that, in the end, the whole world was stolen from somebody, most
of
it repeatedly; there are
claims and counterclaims and counter-counterclaims for every inch of the
planet that is desirable and for much that is not. The second is that
people
(and the governments they form) do not like to give back what they have
acquired, whether that acquisition is of dubious morality or not.
So, those with territorial claims turn to force. But here arises a third
problem: By and large, the aggrieved do not possess the force necessary to
win their way in open battle. Given this, a common response has been the
use
of terror: attacks by the aggrieved not on the soldiers of the enemy, but
on
the people of the enemy - on innocent victims.
Given that this is murder, you would think that terrorism would have a
hard
time finding adherents. But tribalism is a powerful corrupting force, and
so
is ideology, and an awful quality of modern times has been the degree to
which terror by various movements has been accepted as legitimate by those
who support the goals of those movements.
Communism found no difficulty persuading generations on the left that
terror
on the most massive scale was justified by the need to free the world from
the yoke of capitalistic imperialism. Irish-Americans have almost
monolithically supported the IRA in its decades of bombings and killings
aimed at scaring the British out of Northern Ireland. And so it goes, case
by tribal or ideological case, around the world.
more text................
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