Two bombs went off at the British Consulate in New York City, although no lives were lost it obviously had some kind of meaning. The explosion was eerily timed with the election of a Prime Minister in the United Kingdom, connection possible. With a full circle of terror attacks now seeming to unfold in our world what's a person to do? It began with 9/11, went to the Spain Subway bombing and now this. Terror is becoming more and more common-place in places where it was a simple convenience to work or do business.


Questions for Debate:


1.) Is the term "random act of terror" proper describing any terrorist attack?

2.) Are random acts of terror escalating for any specific reason? What are Americans and other modernized nations doing to merit such attacks on innocent people?

3.) What kind of measures should be taken to prevent further acts of national/international  terror? Can they even be prevented if determination is strong enough?


Bombs blast in the British Consulate of New York

1.) Is the term "random act of terror" proper describing any terrorist attack?
No, because terrorist attacks are very deliberate, very planned. They are not at all random.

2.) Are random acts of terror escalating for any specific reason? What are Americans and other modernized nations doing to merit such attacks on innocent people?
"Merit" is the wrong term to use here, because it carries connotations of moral worth. Let us instead say that American policy towards the Middle East (its support of Israel and its invasion of Iraq) are causal factors in these attacks.

3.) What kind of measures should be taken to prevent further acts of national/international  terror? Can they even be prevented if determination is strong enough?
Defensive measures cannot succeed; the terrorist can always choose the place and time of his attack to go around your security measures, and there are too many targets to cover. Offensive measures cannot succeed, because the terrorist can always hide. The only hope of success here is to cut off the popular and financial support that the terrorist needs to flourish. This requires winning the goodwill of the Islamic population.

1.  No.  The target was not random.  It was the British government.

2.  No.  Acts of terror are usually perpetuated on nations that advocate freedom and civilization by those who advocate tyranny and/or anarchy.

3.  The way to prevent more terrorism is to convince those fighting it that it's not an effective tactic.  In other words, kill the terrorists and their handlers and make it extremely painful for their enabling states and individuals.

The Bush government "gets it".  So did the Thatcher government in dealing with the terrorists from the IRA.  So do the Israelis.

1. You are almost certainly correct.

2. Incorrect, the majority of terrorist acts fit the original definition: state terror. The majority of terrorism is carried out by states against their own populations in an effort to control them.

3. It would be wise to reconsider that tactic, since America, as an enabling state, would be subject to your remedy.

3.  You are correct that defensive strategy cannot work.  You are incorrect that an offensive strategy cannot work.  Part of the offensive strategy is cutting off financial and popular support.  The other part is cutting of lives of the terrorists.

And how does one cut off popular support while also cutting off the lives of the terrorists? Have you some means up your sleeve for determining with exactitude who is a terrorist and who is not? If you don't, doesn't that mean that we will occasionally err and kill innocents? And whenever we kill somebody, do you believe that the victim's kin will not be more inclined to support terrorism against us? If each of our victims has an extended kin group of about 100 people, then does not killing that victim create 100 more terrorist sympathizers or actual terrorists?

You cut off popular support for terrorists by championing freedom in the societies that produce those terrorists.  You also punish regimes that support terrorists and terrorism.

I reject your premise that killing a terrorist creates more terrorists.  If you had a family member who went off the deep end and became a terrorist, intent on killing innocents, would you follow suit if the government captured or killed him?  I doubt it.  Especially if you lived in a free society.

 
These people do not like us and they are not going to be thanking us for bringing them democracy. If a fellow countryman takes up arms against us and we kill him, then he is seen as a martyr and a hero, somebody to be emulated. Have you noticed that the supply of suicide bombers has not dried up, but in fact grown? Terrorist attacks, not just in Iraq, but all over the world have been steadily rising in the last few years. The Bush Administration was so concerned over this development that they stopped publication of a State Department report on terrorist activity because it makes our policies look like an utter failure. 
 

You are simply mis-characterizing the view of the majority in Iraq.  The US gave them their freedom.

Not only will Iraq not hate us (assuming we win this war), I predict they will eventually be our strongest partner in the middle east.

Do you have some sort of inside track into the opinions of the Iraqi people? Some ESP power that gives you the ability to read their minds? At present, nobody has a clear assessment of the overall feelings of the Iraqi people. They voted all right, and a lot of them voted for politicians who are now saying "Yankee go home!" Doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of America to me.

The notion that democracy will take root in Iraq belies all historical experience with the democratization process. I'm just doing some research on that and will create a topic on it when I'm ready, but for now, let me just remind you of the soothsayer's words: "Aye, Caesar, but not gone!"


Or in a few years you'll be making posts on this site cursing "those stupid ungrateful Iraqis".

With respect to (2), what you are referring to is state tyranny, not terrorism. Of course, oppression occurs all over the world in states that do not value life, freedom, or individual liberty. The former government of Iraq would be a good example as Saddam filled mass graves with his political opponents.

With respect to (3), the USA does not "enable" terrorist groups. I'm not sure what you're referring to with that remark but it's obviously not something that can be backed up with objective fact.

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/429/429lect01.htm

The French Revolution Origins of Terrorism

    The word "terrorism" traces its roots in the English language to the French Revolution (1789-1795) when British statesman Edmund Burke used the term to describe the actions of the Jacobin-dominated French government.  During a period of the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror (1793-1794) under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre (Head of the Committee on Public Safety and Revolutionary Tribunal), thousands of "enemies of the state" were put on trial and guillotined...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=1604360&dopt=Abstract

The effects of government-sponsored terrorism, characteristic of the contemporary Central American civil wars, are particularly devastating to children. In Guatemala, the Mayan population felt the worst of a systematic and brutal counterinsurgency, where over 400 rural villages were destroyed between 1981 and 1983.

On three, I realize I was being unfair to you.  I suppose I need you to define terrorism before I can go into my remark on the US as a sponsor of terror.  After all, your definition might not be the same as mine.

Again, by your logic, the people of Germany and Japan should hate us to this day, especially Japan.  The process of "democratization" was totally foreign to that culture.  We both incinerated millions of their civilians and imposed a foreign form of government upon them.

Why don't they hate us like you assert the Iraqis will?

I'm not saying that all the Iraqis will hate us; I am denying your claim that they love us. What little evidence we have on the matter certainly points more towards hatred than love. Some already hate us. We will have to wait to see how it turns out but rosy predictions of Iraqis wearing cowboy hats and waving little American flags are wishful thinking, not reasonable speculation.

As for Germany and Japan, that's a much more complex story. In both cases we were appreciated for defending them after they were defeated, as well as the enormous generosity we demonstrated with the Marshall Plan. The Germans and Japanese are not masochists who loved us because we defeated them; they were both under threat from the Soviet Union and we provided protection against that threat. Iraq is not threatened by anybody and we are not protecting them from anybody. Nor are we giving them anywhere near as much aid as we gave Germany and Japan.

You need ME to define terrorism?

You're the one making the assertion that the US sponsors terrorism. You define it. You back it up.

I say that what you're asserting is absurd. The Central American civil wars were being instigated by people outside of those countries; namely the USSR, Cuba, and N. Korea.

The civilians were caught in the crossfire like they are in every war. That doesn't make the US a sponsor of "terrorism". Not even close.

But I know my definition, I want yours. I want to know where you stand on this matter. Until I know how you define the word terrorism, I can't properly give you examples of terrorism sponsored by or committed by the United States. I know my definition implicates the US, but perhaps yours is different from mine. Perhaps mine is even in error.

Why do you insist on attributing ideas to me that I did not post.  Where did I "claim that the Iraqis love us"???  You are inventing points that were not made in order to knock them down.  You do know what that is called, don't you?

So Japan and Germany post WWII are "much more complex" than Iraq?  So lets just assume that you're correct on that point.  If we were able to institute democracy in a situation that was "far more complex" in those two countries, then it should be relatively simple in Iraq, right?

Garsh darnit, feller, I shore can't think of what it might be called. I'm jus' too dumb, ya know?
Seriously, I erred in making that claim. You have painted overly rosy pictures of Iraqi gratitude for American magnanimity, but you have never claimed that they love us. For that mistake, I apologize.



Oh, dear. After the first long history lesson I wanted to avoid another long lecture. I'll try to keep it brief. Germany has a tradition conducive to democracy traceable all the way back to the Roman era. The Roman historian Tacitus described their social arrangements in his description of Germany, "Germania". It wasn't anything like a modern formal democracy, but neither was it anything at all like monarchy or aristocracy. The political system was highly decentralized, with various leaders at various levels, but even then there was a strong sense of a man's rights and the need for leaders to obtain popular assent for actions. The Swiss direct democracy is a direct descendent of some of these ancient customs.

We can see the historical consequences of this in English history and its long tradition toward democratic restraints on centralized power. In Germany, this manifested itself in an inability to coalesce any kind of strong authority right up until 1860. Moreover, German society was broken up by all manner of local democratic power centers; the guilds, the burgers, the hansa, and so on. A local prince might oversee the whole show but his powers were greatly limited by the various rights of all the different groups.

You might find this hard to believe, but for most of the last thousand years the Germans were seen as hopelessly unmilitary because nobody could force anybody to serve in their armies. It wasn't until Freddie the G that they had any kind of decent army, and they didn't start to lionize the military until the wars of unification in the latter 19th century.

Anyway, this basically democratic stance was fundamental to German politics. Even with unification under the Hohenzollerns, local rights were demanded and respected. Bismarck created the first pension system in the world largely as a way of gaining crucial popular support. Even his most outrageous ploy, the Ems telegram, was largely directed towards gaining popular support for a war that he just couldn't get public support for otherwise (nothing ever changes, does it?)

When Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated in 1918, there was a period of anarchy, but the Germans quickly settled onto a republic. Note that this happened without outside support -- they did it all by themselves. There was lots of political instability during the 20s, including violent attempts to overthrow the republic, none of which succeeded. The Weimar republic held together until it was subverted by Hitler -- but only after he had won a democratic election.

Thus, when the Americans overran Germany in 1945, they did not bestow democracy upon the Germans -- they restored democracy that had been steadily strengthening for a thousand years. Indeed, the East Berlin rebellion of 1953 demonstrates how seriously the Germans took democracy. That story is complex, too, but basically it was not an attempt to throw out the Russians, it was an attempt to hold the new East German government to promises it had made for democratic participation in various actions (although the specific trigger was a labor dispute).

Japan is a fascinating story. Unlike the Germans, they had absolutely no democratic tradition, but they did have an extremely strong tradition of obedience to authority. MacArthur dictated a constitution, the Emperor told the Japanese people to embrace it, and they embraced it. The early years of the Japanese democracy were a bit of a farce -- they really didn't know how to go about the business, and so they, in essence, asked how they were supposed to vote on various issues and they voted as they were told.

It took about twenty years to get some actual debate going on, and Japanese democracy continued to operate under the consensual style that is the hallmark of Japanese society rather than the adversarial model that is the hallmark of our own. This made for very boring politics and a sense that elections were mere formalities. Only in the last ten or twenty years, especially since Koizumi, have we seen anything like democracy as we know it. All in all, I'd say it took about 40 or 50 years for Japan to learn democracy. And that is with a homogeneous, highly cooperative society.

Iraq, by contrast, has none of the democratic tradition that Germany had and none of the social cohesion or respect for authority that made Japanese democratization possible. It's a completely different -- and much worse -- candidate for democracy. If they're very lucky, they might have a functioning democracy in 50 years, but they'll have to go through a lot of ugly turmoil to achieve that. The most likely scenarios have strongmen running the show for at least a few decades -- some of which might be worse than Saddam.

But what the hey -- we can always invade all over again, can't we?

Oh, don't worry about having to "lecture".  I'm sure you enjoy writing it....  The concept of being "concise" is something that not everyone appreciates.  But, we're in a free country, right?

But, they just had a free and democratic election in that country a few months ago.

I guess they are 49 years and 10 months ahead of schedule, right?

Well, yes, and they had an election in Zimbabwe just a few weeks ago -- that must mean that Zimbabwe is a democracy too, right? Or how about all those thousands of township elections they had in China over the last year -- has China suddenly transformed into a democracy? There are elections being held all over the globe all the time. If one election a democracy does make, then we're just swimming in democracy these days!

3.) What kind of measures should be taken to prevent further acts of national/international terror? Can they even be prevented if determination is strong enough?Go to the UN and demand a global war on terrorism and all countries involved in it's support. Do not allow the terrorists to get assistance from governments that support one cause or another. Decide that any and all terrorist attacks will boomerang against us. It should not matter if it is the IRA, Basques, PLO, A-Quadia, etc. The world needs to understand that all terrorism is global and will be back to haunt all of us.

loreng59, I don't see how these measures could be effective. What does it mean to "go to the UN and demand a global war against terrorism"? I'm sure they'd be happy to oblige with a meaningless resolution decrying terrorism, but what specific measures would you want them to enact? Recall also that global opinion is unfavorable to the US anti-terrorism efforts; they are unlikely to cooperate with any kind of forceful measures.

You suggest a global war on all countries involved in the support of terrorism. I can assure you that we will get no support from anybody -- not even Britain -- for further military actions. They will turn us down flat.

How would you implement your recommendation "Do not allow the terrorists to get assistance from governments that support one cause or another"? If some country gives assistance to terrorists, how can we stop it?

If we do not start fighting terrorism for real, not this play stuff or it will consume the entire world.  As for what to do, my personal favorite involves the use of thermonuclear devises. Shouldn't have to do it more than once or twice to get everybody's attention.

If we do not start fighting terrorism for real, not this play stuff or it will consume the entire world.  As for what to do, my personal favorite involves the use of thermonuclear devises. Shouldn't have to do it more than once or twice to get everybody's attention.

OK, so you would like to use H-bombs. On what targets? I would guess that Tehran would be your first pick. Let's suppose that we drop one on Tehran, killing a couple of million people. At the very least, we would see the following consequences:

All Islamic nations immediately embargo oil shipments to the USA.
No other nation agrees to our entreaties for oil shipments.
The President declares a state of emergency and activates the national strategic petroleum reserve.
Gasoline rationing is invoked. Each licensed driver is allotted 20 gallons per month.
Facing economic collapse, the US issues an ultimatum to Canada, Mexico and Venezuela: deliver all your oil to us or face invasion.
The United Nations passes a resolution requiring the US to destroy all its nuclear weapons or face economic sanctions.
The US rejects the UN resolution and invades Mexico and Venezuela.
The UN imposes total economic sanctions on the US. No trade of any kind is permitted.
Intense guerrilla activity in Mexico and Venezuela leads to heavy US casualties.
Saboteurs destroy oil facilities in Mexico and Venezuela.
The US economy begins to crumble.
Mexican sympathizers in the US destroy some petroleum facilities.
The US government rounds up all Mexican-Americans and places them in concentration camps.
Harsh security measures are invoked to protect US infrastructure.
The US economy collapses.
Anarchy sweeps over the US; government operations collapse.
The President dies in mysterious circumstances.
A new President appeals to the European Union to send forces to restore order.
The EU agrees to lead a multinational force that will simultaneously disarm the American military and establish a UN protectorate.
Occupying forces move into the US and restore order.
The US is now under foreign occupation.

Boy, we sure showed them terrorists, didn't we?

The Iranian people overthrow the Mullahs.
The House of Saud is deposed by it's Shi'ite majority with CIA assistance.
Egypt finally moves to democracy.
The EU decides to move against against terrorism instead of supporting it.
The UN is reformed so that it no longer a heaven for thugs and dictatorships.
The world can move forward to resolve their real problems.

If we do not start fighting terrorism for real, not this play stuff or it will consume the entire world.  As for what to do, my personal favorite involves the use of thermonuclear devises. Shouldn't have to do it more than once or twice to get everybody's attention.

I am astounded by your predictions for the behavior of others. If somebody nuked Washington, would you respond by revolting against President Bush? When you attack a group, its members don't turn on their leaders, they turn on you.

There's an old Arab saying: "Me against my brother. My brother and I against our cousins. Our cousins and us against those in our tribe. Our tribe against other tribes. Our religion against other religions." I have probably botched the paraphrase, but the concept is central to Arab social structure: we fight each other, but we always close ranks against outsiders. The Iranians are not Arab, but the operate under a similar social system. They will not respond to a thermonuclear attack that kills millions of their fellow-citizens by taking our side. They will vow blood vengeance to the death.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, we didn't respond by impeaching President Roosevelt. When the Battle of Britain began, the British did not throw out Churchill. It's possible to overturn a government by giving aid to an existing armed rebellion, but to attack a nation out of the blue does not accomplish that goal, especially when you go after the civilian population.

Can you name a single case in all of history where a ferocious attack on a civilian population caused that population to turn on its leaders? I can think of a few cases from ancient history in which the leaders of a besieged city were deposed prior to a surrender, but in all those cases, the defenders were hoping to curry favor with the besiegers by presenting them with the heads of the leadership.

Your prediction about Saudi Arabia would be nice if it were possible, but the Saudis are Sunnis, not Shi'ites, and if the House of Saud is overthrown, it will almost certainly be replaced by an extremely anti-American regime.

Really, I find your claims unbelievable. They are completely contradicted by historical experience. I again ask you to provide some sort of historical justification for your claims.

Actually just as likely as your scenario. You not only have botched the saying. You apparently know next to nothing about the Arabs. They do not ever unite, and have not in the last 1,000 years. And yes the majority of the Saudis are Shi'ite not Sunni, only the ruling class is Sunni, very similar to Iraq.

In general, my definition of a terrorist is a person who kills innocent civilians in order to terrorize the population of a civilized nation. Terrorists are those who attack free societies and nations that stand for civilization, not disorder, chaos, or a repressive totalitarian system.

Terrorists are people like Al Qaeda. They are people like the PLO (and all of their factions), ETA, Shining Path, The Red Brigade, the IRA (and their factions), Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and dozens of other similar groups.