Terrorism in 'Murica (aka The Homeland)

Britain also has post-colonial baggage x10000 and part of acknowledging it is dealing with a multitude of groups that have a sideline in using homemade explosives to underscore their grievances. The American right is in complete denial about the flipside of USA! USA! being the kind of post-imperialist baggage that has explosives in it.

― days of wine and neuroses (suzy), Monday, December 28, 2009 11:13 AM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

don't agree we have a large amount of baggage with this guy tbh. complex-ish issue, but -- i live with a rich-parented nigerian, and also with a less rich guy-whose-dad-was-a-colonial-administrator in nigeria. we all *seem* to get along. i don't think this bomber, born into wealth some decades after independence, had a legitimate grievance against the (no doubt nefarious and perfidious and generally terrible) british.

i can understand how subjectively he may feel differently, but HMG does do its fair share of handwringing and mea-culpa'ing about the dreadful legacy of colonialism. not sure what else it is supposed to do; but were it to go further, into the realm of reparations (which to me seems historically moronic but ne way) -- is this chap really one of the victims? his father at least seems to think not.

the question isnt "is this specific nigerian terrorist justified in his actions against the US" (spoiler: no) its "what actions has the US govt taken both directly and indirectly that lead to conditions where this is seen as a legitimate way to air grievances" (answer: take your pick)

but my guess, given that my mayne is talking specifically about the UK, is that this is a US/UK divide thing

don't want 2 sound like charles krauthammer (tho: balla name) but if you tailor policy around not offending the nutters then... that is not a good thing. we have this talk every time, but imo there is a difference between a grievance and a total and all-consuming hatred of the decadent west/the jews/etc. etc. maybe this guy is single-issue and im all wrong and jumping to conclusions, but the last round of british-based bombers (who lived down my street) certainly were *not* making a "rational response to british foreign policy" or that have you. they really did have a problem with... women going to nightclubs, etc. that is not a "legitimate" grievance.

xpost

yes this is really a uk thing and the iffiness of the british left in opposing radical islam.

right, but were not talking about "tailoring policy," were talking about, you know, "do you or do you not arm mujahedin" (no) or "to what extent should we be partnering with a country that pumps money into hardline madrassas" (less than we are now) or "how can we minimize civilian casualties" (stop invading countries)

i.e. its not about mollifying radicals its about doing everything "we" can to not aid their radicalization in the first place

I see history mayne's point: some motherfucker is obsessed with English women showing lots of leg, and it's silly to think that ceasing to bomb the shit of civilians in Yemen, e.g., is going to change that. Arguably the crazy motherfuckers are getting material support by people with "legit" grievances, but Qutb-like psychos aren't going to stop being psycho even if we do clean up our foreign policy. Maybe they'd stop if we installed sharia, who knows. And those of us who always turn to blaming Western foreign policy for creating terrorism are using the terrorism we've actually had in the US and UK this decade as a proxy war against Western militarism.

in the last sentence I mean: the actual terrorism in the West we've had this decade (e.g. 9/11, Madrid, London, shoe bomber and the burning blanket guy) was done by crazies obsessed with Western decadence. Turning the discussion to Western militarism as having caused these episodes both misses the focus of these crazies' obsessions, and suits a Leftist agenda aimed at ending Western militarism.

theyre obsessed with western militarism too!

i mean this isnt "just" about western decadence for "them" or for "us"

yeah I'm just trying to articulate history mayne's Krauthammerian point (whether it's in good faith or not I don't care): in this view their obsession with Western decadence is what gets the one's who've actually acted in the West, to act---as opposed to the USS Cole bombers, e.g., who may have been concerned with US militarism more than our sailors fucking Yemeni whores or whatever.

there will always be crazy people obsessed with purity and decadence. the question is whether these people become violent radicals or whether they, on the other hand, just become that nutter rocking back and forth in the corner muttering about whores. it is endlessly demonstrable that foreign occupation, violence and torture radicalize people. remember that quttub was tortured. so was zawahiri. either by the cia or cia-trained agents.

Apparently the seat-back maps are back on, so they didn't win this time.

imo the most important factor in u.s. foreign misadventuring isnt necessarily the creation of crazy angry people but the encouraging of tolerance for their loco views - if the absolute nutters are screaming death to the great satan a much bigger chunk of normals is going all whatevs ive got bigger problems than trying to defend some country of assholes

you're making me wonder if there's an iranian version of lolspeak and for that i love you ice cr?m

All my Nigerian friends are from Christian families and funnel their post-colonial ambivalence through things like being annoyed about Shell Oil and globalism.

imo the most important factor in u.s. foreign misadventuring isnt necessarily the creation of crazy angry people but the encouraging of tolerance for their loco views

otm. and this works in both directions, obviously -- the actions of al qaida open up space in the u.s. domestic discourse for dick cheney and the mad torturers of Neoconnia. and really this suits the interests of radicals on both sides and can end up trapping everybody in endless cycles of retaliation.

not really sure about that. the last time i checked pretty much everybody hated al qaeda and dick cheney.

well cheney never cared about personal popularity because he understood that it didn't matter much to what he was trying to do. 9/11 gave him the opportunity to push government in a lot of directions that would have been impossible under non-9/11 circumstances, and he took advantage of it.

fuck knows how to prevent these bastards from doing what they do, but this is mad. rights or wrongs of the afghanistan war aside, you can't do foreign policy based on whether it will annoy radical islamists/any other crazy motherfucker.

what i said was kind of a throwaway comment, and fuck if i know how you pulled this from it

it is endlessly demonstrable that foreign occupation, violence and torture radicalize people. remember that quttub was tortured. so was zawahiri. either by the cia or cia-trained agents.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, December 28, 2009 1:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

both of them were tortured (which im not defending, obviously) because they were already radicalized and were deemed a threat to the egyptian state. zawahiri in particular was a violent radical before his imprisonment.

perhaps left to its own devices, the muslim brotherhood would have settled down to harmless nutterdom; perhaps without the cold war, the CIA would never have supported bad regimes the world over (and regimes in general would have been naturally good); perhaps if, in the present, the US refused to arm israel, then we wouldn't have young idiots trying to blow up jets.

but perhaps it would take more than that?

maybe when this guy recovers he can talk us through his thinking -- what it would take to assuage him, his vision for a peaceful afghanistan, etc.

i wish US foreign policy were cleaner, but i'm not convinced that it's possible or in every case desirable to run it without making enemies.

All my Nigerian friends are from Christian families and funnel their post-colonial ambivalence through things like being annoyed about Shell Oil and globalism.

― days of wine and neuroses (suzy), Monday, December 28, 2009 3:01 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah my housemate is christian. none of the nigerians i've lived with in the uk have been annoyed by globalism to my knowledge -- i mean, our entire situation, their being educated here, is a product *of* globalism. (and so indirectly, often, of the oil industry.) we all feel ambivalent about the material bases of modern western-style society, of course.

perhaps left to its own devices, the muslim brotherhood would have settled down to harmless nutterdom; perhaps without the cold war, the CIA would never have supported bad regimes the world over (and regimes in general would have been naturally good); perhaps if, in the present, the US refused to arm israel, then we wouldn't have young idiots trying to blow up jets.

but perhaps it would take more than that?

not sayin that yr doing this, but: that last part is what's often leveraged by the US media (don't know about UK) and talking heads and bloviating holiday relations into ugly generalizations about ragheads and apologies for actual, regrettable, shouldn't-have-happened foreign policy missteps. "it" taking "more than that" so often scans (to me) as "there's just no changin those ~muslims, they'll NEVER be happy," as if that applies to normal, non-radicals and not just obsessive nutters.

but the point isn't about *all* muslims, but about the actual terrorists we've seen from 9/11 onward in the West. Look at what motivated *them*; and ask to what extent changing Western foreign policy would have assuaged them.

i know it isn't! i said that that point (about the actual radicals) is very often used by domestic morons to tar *all* muslims. which is why it gets my hackles up, etc.

obviously a lot of things, internal and external, led to the rise of fundamentalist islam over the last several decades. and it's not a morally straightforward story in any way, not least because there aren't many real good guys you can point to either in the middle east or in other countries' dealings with the region. but i think the fundamentalists themselves are essentially at this point a cult -- it's a big cult, with a lot of cultural complexities in different countries, but the point is that having come into existence it is not going to fade just because or even if the conditions that helped bring it into existence start to change. it is running on its own gas (literally and figuratively) and it's going to be a problem at some scale for a long time to come. the problem is that we (i.e. the west) has to somehow separate how we deal with the death cult from how we deal more broadly and diplomatically with the region at large.

as for whether or not changing foreign policy would have assuaged some now blown-up terrorists: it is a mystery. i'm not at all suggesting that we conduct foreign policy in a way specifically designed to not annoy terrorists, but the idea that our mistakes don't ~really~ have that much to do with radicalization (or popular support/tolerance of radicalization) is patently absurd.

this may be apples and oranges, but the guys setting road side bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan are not doing it because women go to nightclubs in London.

but some of the people supplying the money that buys the bombs are doing it because of that. or they're doing it to ingratiate themselves with the local religious leadership. or who knows, it's all complicated and it's not an either/or situation.

xp right---Bush's assurance that we were fighting them over there so that they don't fight us over here conflated two different kinds of terrorists. They're not unrelated, but they're not motivated by exactly the same concerns, either.

i'm not convinced that it's possible or in every case desirable to run it without making enemies

lol who has even tried to convince you of this? you sound like rumsfeld - "do i think you can have a foreign policy that doesn't create a single enemy in the entire world? no."

all we're talkin about here, history mayne, is what makes pseudo-qaeda nutters think it's a good idea to kill western civilians. there is obviously not one answer. it's a big, weird subject. but your take appears to be that they get radicalized all by themselves, somewhere deep in their own minds, by some ineluctable process. ok, but that seems to ignore a whole pile of evidence that correlates violent occupation and you know, decades of repression and torture training techniques, with hmmm a bunch of people who have violent impulses towards those they feel are responsible.

(though i doubt the thought process is that clear)

(and in the case of a wealthy nigerian there has to be a lot of odd vicarious sympathy action goin on somehow)

but perhaps it would take more than that?

naturally i assume you are talking about cultural exchange programs and education initiatives here

well resentment is a complicated thing. just look at the american south. there's still a lot of cultural resentment there, which still drives the politics and religion of the region in a lot of ways, but the sources of it are hard to separate out. there are legitimate grievances -- the population is historically poorer, less healthy, less educated, has been economically exploited by outside interests -- but then there are a lot of grievances that outsiders are less likely to think of as legitimate. and in any given person, those resentments are likely to be all bound up together.

resentment, anger, grievances = one thing
terrorist acts = another

not loving the implication that just because scaling back american militarism wont cure terrorism completely we should stop trying

xpost

sure, and obviously it takes a lot of factors to get from one to the other. it's just, even if you're going talk "root causes," there's rarely the kind of clarity that anyone on any ideological side would prefer.

otm. and this works in both directions, obviously -- the actions of al qaida open up space in the u.s. domestic discourse for dick cheney and the mad torturers of Neoconnia. and really this suits the interests of radicals on both sides and can end up trapping everybody in endless cycles of retaliation.

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Monday, December 28, 2009 10:06 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not really sure about that. the last time i checked pretty much everybody hated al qaeda and dick cheney.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, December 28, 2009 10:09 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

u must admit they had a good run

i know what you mean, but they both narrowly missed defeats that would have resulted in them being forgotten completely - cheney with the '00 election and al-q having been shunned by basically everyone and driven into the hinterlands of afghanistan. naturally once assholes like this succeed in grabbing the spotlight they will attract other assholes, like some kind of asshole magnet, but after the initial bump as far as i can tell cheney's actions have brought only deepening derision and mistrust, and al-q's only substantial friends these days appear to be certain ratfuckers in the pakistani intelligence services

i personally find it v heartening that people somewhat tired of the bush/qeada codependent shitstorm after a while - and i think yr right that there was a perfectly inauspicious moment that made it all possible - but theres still a mighty appetite in america and worldwide for all sorts of dire conquest

ok phew dont hav to vote 4 palin http://www.businessinsider.com/live-tv-is-back-on-jetblue-flights-2009-12

Yeah, ABC Radio just reported that the DHS/TSA were hastily scaling back the additional restrictions

in case anyone is wondering why we dont have a TSA head its because some republican senator has a secret hold on the nomination

once again a+ to the framers of our constitutions for creating the most useless body in modern politics

i've been asked to arrive four hours before departure for check-in

tbf the senate at this point has mostly created itself - iirc the only weird thing thats constitutional per say is unproportional representation

Customers traveling from any Canadian destination to the United States should be advised that effective December 28, Transport Canada (a department of the Canadian government) put into place a ban on any carry-on baggage that customers would have access to during flight.

Items that are excluded from this restriction include small purses, cameras, coats, items for care of infants, laptop computers, diplomatic or consular bags, crutches, canes, walkers, containers carrying life-sustaining items, medications and medical devices, musical instruments and special-needs items. This directive is in effect until 9:00 p.m. EST on December 29, 2009, although it may be extended.

o u too now canada

I'd love to see a Thick of It style dramatization of the "decisions" that lead to these policies.

But my main concern is whether airplane cabins have finally been equipped with rolls of duct tape. It is nearly 2010 people.

Update: my writer friend who was concerned about profiling found that BA moved a white guy into his exit row seat and shunted him up to the middle of the plane. If they are going to do this to people with 'funny names' (his words) maaaaybe they should get one education and learn about the difference between Hindu and Muslim?

"The warning that the bathrooms would be shut down led to lines 10 people deep at each lavatory. A demand by one attendant that no could read anything either elicited gasps of disbelief and howls of laughter.

Book bombs, it was only a matter of time until someone in the government remembered they used to hide squirt guns and contraband in them in high school.

Removal of fake arms and legs ought to also be on the slate.

Colostomy and urostomy bags, too, because they have the capacity for some volume.

No using of the bathroom because you might be removing your 'plan' filled with something or other. (See Papillon.)

Running discussion and comment carried over from Sunday on the bomber's underwear bomb, efficacy, overreaction, weak leadership and the usual ease with which failed plots turn into wins when the country acts like it has a glass jaw.

At my blog:

http://bit.ly/74SqRz