The terrorist won
Out of context: Reply #26
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One of the fundamental laws of warfare is to understand your enemy. What his motivations are, what are his goals, etc. It's an odd, funny thing that what yields great success in the pursuit of destroying your enemy wholly is to know him as well or not better than he knows himself.
There is a purposeful and directed obfuscation among the discussion we are allowed to have in the West, and specifically in America and the UK, about what exactly are the goals of these "terrorists" other than that they "hate us" and want to "commit terror".
I am sure at certain levels of the intelligence services and in upper echelons of the military some are discussing this, although I'd bet that the ones discussing it aren't really listened to, because the benefits of ignoring it for private, short term gain is too great. Not a good career choice to undermine massive amounts of funding to keep us "safe" just because you have a glimmer of truthful insight.
So to say that the terrorists are a "response to post-colonial fall out" isn't really understanding what the "terrorists" are about, empathetically speaking, but rather a studied and distant academic summation of what suits our emotional reactions and cultural framework. And it sounds good when intoned by talking heads when they appear on the TV, especially when they are labeled "Generic Academic Anti-War Left Spokesperson".
Furthermore, what drives a kid form Pakistan, Somalia or Saudi Arabia or the son of an Afghan bodega owner in Detroit to travel to the middle east to partake in Jihad might be all very different things.
Any discussion of "winning" and "losing" itself without knowing what is actually being fought over, for why and by whom is just agit-prop. And I think the answer isn't as clear cut as some kind of post-colonial response anymore. That is a boilerplate answer that doesn't map to reality.
Georgesll using thinks he's pretty smart, but he's not. He's the kid with the mohawk and the leather jacket giving the finger to the cop thinking he's pretty sharp and unique, while lacking to understand that his pose is itself an established, conventional response all in and of itself.
And while I think the response of increased authoritarian intrusion into areas formerly considered areas of personal privacy are of deep, deep concern and should force us to have a deep debate about what our culture values are in it's espousement of "freedom", I am less convinced that in and of themselves such security measures at, and confined to, localized points such as international airports and borders are in fact the grave undermining of what a "free society" means within the larger scope of historical context that so many seem to get their panties in a bunch about. Again, since we are unable to have an actual discussion about the true threats, we can not have an actual discussion about the relevance of the counter-reactions.
- tell your mom the cookies were good last weekendversion3
- Ooo..moderator talks tough with lame joke that worked when he was 12.********
- I get your point, but it sounds like a lot of hot air. What's your take on the "terrorist's" reasoning then?Gucci
- too much to read, what was your argument in 4 bullet points ... pleaseautoflavour