catapult magazine

A couple of days ago I was looking at the newspaper here in Winnipeg and on the front page I saw a headline reading “AL QAEDA STRIKES AGAIN?” This struck me for a couple of reasons.
One, it struck me because I’ve heard little to nothing about Al Qaeda in almost a year. I was beginning to think that the search for Bin Laden was over and that the “War on Terrorism” was a bust. I don’t know about anyone else and I don’t mean to offend, but I’m of the opinion that the war on Iraq was in part a distraction from the failure of the War on Terrorism. In short, when was the last time Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden was mentioned in the media?
Secondly, seeing this story in the newspaper struck me because this is only a couple weeks after the end of the war in Iraq. Given my aforementioned attitude towards the war in Iraq, of course I’m going to make some kind of connection. This is all the conspiracy theorist in my talking, I know, but I’m just wondering if anyone else sees this in a similar way. The distraction ends and suddenly Al Qaeda strikes again.
I guess there always needs to be an enemy.

Just some food for thought.

I’m pretty sure that terrorism won’t ever ever ever go away. So maybe the “War on” approach isn’t an effective one—at least it doesn’t have a good track record. You can make Saddam go away with a war, but you can’t make angry Arab boys disappear that way. After the latest bombing in Saudi Arabia, Bush said he would ‘redouble’ the war on terror, which makes me wonder what that could possibly mean!

I’d heard the words “al qaeda” quite a bit in the weeks before this latest attack—mostly by george when he was talking about saddam. he’d usually try to stick the words “al qaeda” into every sentence that contained the word “saddam,” never mind that no credible link has ever surfaced between the two. (guilt by association: if i associate these two words in people’s minds…)

you may have seen this, but rumsfeld’s comments recently regarding whether osama is still alive:

dan, what would be a more effective way to curb terrorism at this point?

That’s a tough question, but I did ask for it didn’t I? To me it’s obvious that you can’t root out terror by killing people or by installing friendly governments in unfriendly countries.

A lot of what has already been done, like strengthening border security and keeping better track of illegals is necessary and good. Maybe it’s good to give pilots guns too. Who knows. But the bullet-proof doors are good and extra security around immigrants from the middle east seems necessary too. But that’s all defensive stuff, right?

It’s the offensive stuff that’s more controversial. For example, invading Iraq won’t alleviate terror, except it will perhaps alleviate the terror inflicted by Hussein on the Kurds and Shias. Killing terrorist leaders in Yemen with a missile from an unmanned drone? Maybe that prevents something. But can’t you just see this going on for ever? Do we really think we can kill all the terrorists? I can’t see it.

One problem I see is hopelessness. A good goal would be to reduce the number of Palestinians without any hope of ever making a decent living. It’s their general hopelessness and their feeling that they are not in charge of their own destiny that is responsible for creating suicide bombers. People who have hope don’t usually commit suicide.

So the next best thing is to ask if we can promote a kinder, gentler Islam somehow. I don’t know how, but you’d think there would be things the US government could do with the equivalent of the 100 billion dollars spent on the Iraq war.

Another problem is the actual guilt of United States foreign policy (through the world bank, IMF, etc) in keeping poor countries poor, etc — if you want to know more about that check out last month’s Harper’s Magazine. How would it be if the US showed that it actually cares about other countries? Why not let companies from poor countries, or maybe from the Arab world bid on Iraqi infrastructure projects?

I hope you see what I’m getting at. The only way to slow terror is to empower people. People need to have hope. But empowering Arabs doesn’t exactly win American presidential elections, does it?

In my opinion one way to curb terrorism would be a drastic change in North American culture. Of course, this is near to impossible. What I don’t understand is why the media feels they have to keep everyone soiling themselves over imminent terrorist attacks when the reality is that, to the best of my knowledge, there hasn’t been anything close to an attack on US or Canadian soil since September 11.

Once thing I know that doesn’t help is all the slander towards these groups in the media. If you piss these people off, it’s not going to make them any more friendly.

I agree completely with dan’s poing about maybe giving some Arab companies contracts in the rebuilding of Iraq. It seems a little bit shady that the company which Cheney used to be involved with snatched some of the contracts up. I know for a fact that on an international it won’t look good that the country that put Iraq in it’s present state is also going to be gaining revenue from its rebuilding.

I agree that instead of spending millions to billions trying to make terrorists go the way of the dinosaur is probably not the right approach. The US foreign policy is more infamous than anything else. Perhaps strengthening ties with Middle Eastern countries would be a wiser thing to do. Then George can live up to his promise of being a “uniter”.

I agree that terror won’t be stopped by bombing, and to a degree that the defensive stuff is good. (I think some of it goes too far in giving the government powers it probably shouldn’t have).

I agree that hopelessness is a big problem. I would also include anger. As far as promoting a kinder, gentler Islam, I think it’s the wrong approach. (For one thing, can you imagine the response of Islamic fundamentalists to the perceived tinkering with their religion by Americans? If you want an easy way to do this, imagine Christian fundamentalists being told what they should believe.)

I’ll be interested to talk about the World Bank and IMF in another discussion—I’m waiting until that article comes online and I’ll read it, though I would guess based on your comments that we’d already agree on a lot of that.

I realize that there are some people who say it’s all the terrorist’s fault, and some who say it’s all the fault of US foreign policy. I tend to think it’s some of each, but I also tend to think we should take care of our own house as a priority—of which a large part is examining and revamping our foreign policies.

The idea of promoting a kinder Islam was a bit off the top of my head. It might not be possible. But there might be ways to encourage this type of thinking without making it seem like you’re telling people what to do. For example, we could have used the 100 billion dollars spent on the war to give some money to each Middle Eastern family that gets their son through his thirties without becoming a terrorist. On second thought… Anyway, I’m just trying to think outside of the box.

yhf: it’s not just the media that’s trying to keep people soiling themselves over the terrorist threat.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/5862945.htm

I just skimmed an article in the Toronto Star that drew a parallel between Bush’s technique for fighting terrorism (ie. wars)—which seems to bolster the ranks of Al-Qaeda, and the Israeli-incursions in the West Bank—which seem to produce more and more suicide bombers.

The conclusion:

“That means the U.S. must seriously work to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which fuels Arab anger throughout the Middle East and help alleviate poverty, he said.”