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Aswad -> RE: Does it bother anyone else the Boston terrorist is 19? (5/2/2013 10:29:12 AM)
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WOTF,
I would like to respect the request for brevity.
Unfortunately, I cannot accomodate it and properly address the topic. That's a shortcoming on my part, I'm sure, and this post is more of a departure in the opposite direction. In fact, so much so that it's probably best suited to being a thread of its own, as is, but this is where it logically belongs in terms of continuity of the conversation.
I'll try to keep it shorter by leaving out some of the various ways in which you've branched the topic already, and making a superficial pass (without editing, this time). Sadly, the formatting got lost in copying it into the browser window, so it may be a bit harder to read than it could've been. If anyone knows how to get the formatting across, I'd be happy to fix it. I've at least reestablished the underlined section headings.
On scope:
I have excluded some things from treatment here, in particular, I've not delved substantially into the Israel/Palestine issue, despite the request that we "complicate away", but I've used it as an example at times. If necessary, I can cover that conflict, but it would have to be in a seperate thread, because this one is currently on the topic of a specific kind of terrorism, not, as you allege, on the topic of my political views, which are more incidental.
On police, militaries and other armed forces:
Militaries, in the modern use of the word, its de facto definition, are the province of nation states. People may form formally organized armed forces, but those aren't recognized as militaries in any meaningful sense; though not a conventional use of the term, we may call such armed forces militias for the sake of the convenience of reference, and I will do so here. Further, we may say that militaries, then, are the organized armed forces whose concern is the martial needs of the nation states to which they are allegiant and subordinate.
By contrast, a police force has as its concern, varying by definition, either (a) the safety of the people, or (b) the enforcement of the rule of law within a nation, as the sole exerciser of power over the citizens on the behalf of the nation as defined and constrained by said laws. The roles of the police and the military should not overlap, though personell may be used in both capacities if there are suitable arrangements in place to allow this to be done within rule of law. Martial law, obviously, circumvents this, and is outside the scope of this discussion.
European nations, at least West European nations, quite universally employ paramilitary police forces to deal with terrorist activities on their home soil, regular police forces to deal with ordinary crimes, and militaries to deal with force majeure or martial conflict. I will not comment here on the USA in this regard, as I'm not sufficiently familiar with how clear and rigid the seperation of concerns is.
On the line between civilian and military targets:
Just to be clear on this from the beginning, this line is our invention, and a relatively recent one. When dealing with nation states, this line makes sense. When one or more belligerents are nation states, this line applies to those belligerents. That is something we've reached a fairly broad international consensus about. A nation state should confine itself to other nation states when it would do war.
This principle appears self evident, though that may be an artifact of being used to it, or even just evidence of our instinctive emotional responses to the disparity of power between humans and irresistible forces (this, obviously, is, on a grander scale, the prime subject of Lovecraftian horror). My ancestors called such an exercise of power, unless absolutely needful and done with the utmost restraint, nidingverk, which loosely translates as abject cowardice.
And on these grounds, double tap is an abhorrent strategy.
It is a case of a military trying to "score" secondary casualties it knows not to be part of its objective and knows to have a higher porportion of civilians than are otherwise tracked. The conventional, internationally accepted doctrine is that civilian casualties are an unfortunate but largely unavoidable and ultimately tolerable consequence of military action, with a broad consensus that such auxillary casualties should be- as far as possible- minimized. Double tap is contrary to this principle.
In the final analysis, a soldier has signed up to die; they are expendable towards the goal of minimizing auxillary casualties.
This is a necessary and desireable element of warfare. Take away this requirement, and a war can go on indefinitely and go to new lengths of depravity and debasement of humanity on a daily basis. War is bloody business, and if we're not willing to endure that, we have insufficient cause to go to war in the first place. Therein lies a safeguard best not circumvented. And I submit that, insofar as soldiering can be said to have any element of nobility, this willingness to sacrifice (in its proper sense, that of sacrificing oneself, not killing others and miscalling it sacrifice) and to sacrifice for principles that uphold the value of life, is an important part of it.
But here, the topic is terrorism.
When dealing with a conflict between peoples- as opposed to nations- the line between civilian and military makes little to no sense. Indeed, terrorism is a case of civilians attacking civilians, which is why European nations deal with this as a strictly criminal matter, rather than a military matter. Israel, however, treats it as a military matter, partly a consequence of the scale of the class/ethnic conflict they are sustaining through occupation and oppression of the Palestinian territories. So opinions clearly differ.
If a civilian enters into a pizza parlor and suicidally detonates a bomb vest, then this is a civilian attack on civilians, a case of mass murder. In the context of terrorist organizations, we might analyze it in terms of organized crime, if we wish, or any number of other terms, except one: it does not make sense to analyze it in military terms, because there is no military acting on behalf of a nation. The line we invented between militaries and civilians has not been crossed by such an action. Other lines have been crossed, important lines, but not that one. Only a military can cross that line; and in responding to such an action, it arguably has, which is why another reason police should handle such matters.
On the lines applicable to terrorism:
One part of what is so jarring about terrorism is twofold, (a) that it unilaterally steps outside the bounds of civilization, and (b) that it is often blind. Blind violence is always jarring. The drunk that suddenly attacks a random passerby. The psychotic man beating up his neighbour for reasons comprehensible only to himself. The jealous ex that attacks the children to hurth the former spouse. The terrorist that attacks innocents at a marathon or a pizza parlor.
Another part, the one most offensive to me, is that the terrorist that strikes a marathon or pizza parlor crosses a line in reducing human beings to instruments, means towards an ends. I don't have much problem with the idea that people kill each other. If you kill someone, you're dealing with that person as a human being; not with kindness, obviously, but with a measure of respect, at least, and as a person. But when you blow up a bomb at a marathon or at a pizza parlor, you're reducing your victims to targets that lack essential humanity; it's part of why dehumanization is necessary to do it, unless you happen to lack empathy, in which case dehumanization is redundant, being already the default condition.
Dehumanization is a close relative of demonization, which often serves as a vessel of dehumanization, and we should seek to correct this flaw in ourselves, our peers and our descendants, so as to build a better future where the conditions which lead to terrorism do not always result in this reduction of human beings to instruments, with the consequent horrors that inevitably entails. We should not dehumanize the perpetrators of terrorism, for in so doing, we lower ourselves to their level, commit the same mistake in our hearts that they committed in theirs, that allowed them to do that for which we are tempted to dehumanize them. As intelligent, conscious, adult beings, it is upon us to behave correctly, not merely react; the latter is perhaps adaptive, but it is inferior to what we are capable of.
Another part, one that is necessary to the degree of public outcry, is that a terrorist usually engages in mass murder, not a slow process of serial killing. The scale of it becomes in and of itself moving to those caught up in it. In this regard, it has a number of strong parallells to school shootings and the like. We become inured to the constant suffering around us, but the exceptional, we take note of. In almost every nation out there, more people have died of car crashes every year than have died of terrorist attacks in the same year. But we adapt to the constant tragedies in which others are caught up; we do not take part in those tragedies. It is the exceptional, the cooccurence of several as a single, mass tragedy, that we share in. Such is the nature of most humans, for good or ill.
On politics and policies; the drone war problem:
Obama is Commander-in-Chief. This means that not only the drone war, but indeed the double-tap thing, whether common or rare, lies at his feet. It exists by his will, or the military is off its leash and it is upon him to reign it back in. Either way, the buck stops with him so long as he wears the title of President, which he can rescind if he feels he is unable to actually function as President. That's how leadership works.
In the West, we may pretend it's not policy when it hasn't been made official. Indeed, it would've been a little more serious- and already it is very serious- if there were an official policy on this, such as some of the IDF's publicized official doctrines. But it is in itself "necessary and sufficient" for something to occur with regularity for it to be the de facto military policy. A simple matter of definition. Note that I'm not asserting anything one way or the other about the frequency of double tap here, as the drone war is in itself conducted in such a manner as to be problematic at best.
In the Middle East, they know how leadership works, as a rule, moreso than most in the West. They know people are getting hit with drone strikes, and they damn well know about the instances where double tap has occured, intentional or not. They know that lies at the feet of Uncle Sam, and through him, America, and ultimately this is on the President. But they can't get at the President, so they go for America, or American interests, or whatever is the most directly relevant thing they can get at to hurt those responsible for their pain. This should be a familiar line of thought. It's surprisingly common, even in the West, even to this day.
Saying Obama would never be stupid enough to make double tap the official policy is fair enough. The PR nightmare is one he would be quite sensitive to. But the reason isn't the image the USA has in the Middle East (you'll note it is inappropriate to say "the Islamic world", which includes parts of Eastern Europe, Asia and so forth). That image was destroyed the moment drone strikes started happening with some frequency.
See, their impression of drone strikes isn't formed by news reports, like our impressions are.
Their impression of drone strikes is formed by the cries of the injured, the silence of the dead, and the wails of the bereaved. Just like, for people at the Boston marathon, the impression wasn't the media reports, but the people around them, the very real human beings around them, dead, dying and injured. There is nowhere in Western Pakistan where it isn't abundantly clear to people what is going on. They are getting hit. Constantly. A back of envelope calculation indicates everyone has a friend of a friend that has been killed by these strikes.
So, you tell me, how would an official statement harm your image with them?
And just what impression do you think they're left with anyway?
Apropos: the Boston bomber gives the US' actions in the Middle East as one of the motives for the attacks.
A brief digression on Israel/Palestine:
The question of official policies reminds me of the comparison between Israel and Palestine, and between the official and ground level views of that situation. Official statements aren't necessary to tell you what's going on; just a peek out the window will tell you. That's part of why the official views may not line up well with the ground, if the officials don't also take a peek out the window once in a while, because that's what people on the ground are doing.
An exchange student from Norway related, during the previous round of violence there, when her bus had been stopped and traffic held up, that she had asked another of the passengers why, and been told- with a shrug- that it was probably a bomb; she commented that you know you're in Israel when bomb scares are the most likely reason your bus got stopped.
A reporter from the same part of Norway, who was in Palestine at the same time, related how the constant bombing made it hard to sleep and that he'd sustained some minor injuries when the windows were blown in by one of the (several) close hits; he commented that you know you're in Palestine when, instead of bomb scares, bombs are actually going off around you all the time.
I've never said killing jews is okay. If I had, then "kind of bad" would be an understatement.
I've said that- at the time the statement was made- 90% of the Jewish part of the Israeli population showed firm support for the occupation, and that this makes them targets to the Palestinians, by a smaller margin of error than what the US has had in its drone strikes. For the Palestinians to attack the people occupying their lands, and those supporting that occupation, in Israel (not elsewhere), would be no different than the Norwegian resistance folks attacking the Nazi occupation and their collaborators.
As noted before, that's a very different situation from what we were discussing, and I won't expand the scope to encompass it without some signs that the more limited scope here is manageable. I only mention it because the assertion that I've supported the killing of jews is beyond the pale (and lacks credibility, at that). I've critizised Israel, not jews.
On what to expect- or, cause and effect:
Human beings exist both as individuals and as part of a greater whole, a fabric of cause and effect. As individuals, we are culpable if we blow shit up. As individuals, we must also know to expect that the weave and warp of the fabric will have a number of consequences, and ideally we should hold ourselves responsible for avoiding knots, tangles and tears when we can, as a part of being good fellow wo/men. This does not excuse the thread that chooses to snap. It merely acknowledges that we know how our environment works, and should take steps to be well adapted organisms, if only for our own good.
Fuck with the Middle East for ages, the backlash will be Jihad. We know this. Fuck with the finances of a nation, the backlash will be a violent brand of right wing nationalism. We know this, too. Fuck with a class or an ethnic group, the backlash will be class/ethnic warfare or revolutions. We know this, as well. These are costly lessons and we've already bought a full set of coursework. Now, we should also set out to learn these lessons, get our money's worth, and act on what we have learned.
Porportionality is not a part of most of the cultures in the Middle East. This is one of the things we tend to forget: the whole idea of porportionality was alien to us, too, once. The ubiquity of this idea in the West we can pin on the Christians, before which the norm was disporportionality. We see remnants of it still, for instance in the Sandy Hook threads, and now also in the Boston threads. Disporportionality is part of what allows someone with a grudge to take it out on a crowd or a group, with the other part being the failure to accurately and appropriately ascribe cause, effect, agency and, ultimately, culpability to those entities to which such things should be ascribed. Correcting these serious flaws in ourselves, in our peers and in our descendents is an important part of creating a better future, in which those moved to terror are not also apt to unleash it on random targets.
There is no apologism here.
Indeed, the apologism is in those that constantly put forth the idea that we need not be responsible for improving our own environment, that we can simply live and expect the world to go our way, rather than seizing our own destiny and making a world that is suitable for us to live in, one that will go our way; that we can simply wave our hands, ignore cause and effect, write off everything bad that happens as "evil" and expect it not to happen again because it "ought not".
Earthquakes "ought not" happen, yet if you live in a seismically active area, you fucking well ought to be prepared for one. That's part of how we've gone from picking up the edibles we find around us in a small part of Africa to colonizing every corner of this world and thriving wherever we find ourselves, this transition from simply existing and reacting to actually thinking, planning ahead and making sense of our environment, shaping it according to our needs.
I strive not to simply react to circumstances, save for acute emergencies that must be dealt with promptly, such as a fire in the house or whatever. If someone insults me, my response isn't merely a simple reaction to which I am moved, ideally, but rather a considered new action that orginiates with me, one that has the form most consonant with my goals under the circumstances, one for which I- and I alone- am responsible; the buck stops with me.
For instance, in a lovers' quarrel, the correct response to an insult isn't a retort, but rather whatever will work toward the goal of cooling down the quarrel to the point where the parties can work out their differences peacefully. When me and Ars argue, as most couples of fifteen years do from time to time, a good strategy is to simply take the blame whether or not that happens to feel (or even be) right, apologize for the perceived offense, make up, make out and then discuss what happened like reasonable, calm adults. That makes us both happier in the long term.
This is what humans do, and it differentiates us from animals.
On truth and perspectives:
There may be such a thing as objective truth, but outside the hard sciences, we humans rarely find it and usually take a long time to do so; individually, most of us are incredibly poor at finding truth, and almost by definition, the rest of us are unlikely to be able to accurately discern whether or not the one that does find it has actually found it or just thinks he has. Thus it is generally a wise strategy to allow for multiple perspectives and subjective truths, as conviction remains the most significant source of human conflict and misery to this date.
Yet, even more importantly, the truth only matters to those who see it. Perspectives, by contrast, matter to those that have them. This means, in dealing with people that have a certain perspective, we will necessarily be closer to reasonable and rational behavior if we keep their perspective in mind, and further, that if they are convinced of a perceived truth we do not share, then we best see them- and deal with them- as if that conviction were indeed the truth, until such time as we reach a consensus with them.
Whether or not someone's beliefs are facts, it is a fact that they believe in them, and we would do well not to ignore facts.
The Nazis considered the Norwegian resistance movement to be terrorism. Under law, it was. Our law. In dealing with the Nazis, back then, one would do well to work within the perspective that "the truth, as they see it, is that we're terrorists", and by symmetry, in dealing with the resistance, the Nazis would do well to work within the perspective that "the truth, as they see it, is that we're illegitimately occupying their territory and they're insurgents fighting a legitimate battle". Amusingly, the Nazis often did work within that perspective, and were able to significantly curb the violence by doing so.
Few people fight a battle they don't consider justified.
Dismissing the validity of their justification or belittling their views, history shows us, is the absolutely least optimal strategy for dealing with someone that gets belligerent with us. That, as Peon has pointed out, was one of the worst and perhaps the most avoidable of the mistakes the UK made in dealing with the IRA. Treating our belligerents as "evil", "animals" or even just "unreasonable" (or, worse, "children with a tantrum") is never a good strategy for ending the violence that troubles us.
The UK eventually learned that lesson. The USA will learn it, too, one way or the other. We, the world, hope you do so the easy way, because a lot of us have already learned it the hard way and think well enough of you that we would like you to avoid having to pay the price that the hard road exacts on those who travel it, a price we've already paid for you that you should avail yourselves of the good we learned from it.
It's like combined shipping, really.
On being the odd one out:
I have a lot of experience with being the odd one out, with standing on the sidelines and observing dispassionately what transpires in the game, with looking in from the outside. And one of my observations has been that, if everyone seems to disagree with you, chances are you either (a) have stumbled onto an important truth, or (b) are completely off base. That, obviously, implies one should pause to reconsider one's position. It's a symptom of being wrong, but not proof of it, and a proper diagnosis is called for, because being wrong is unneccessary. Being wrong is also a very common condition, an affliction we all suffer from now and again throughout our lives. Fortunately, it's usually also one that's easily treated.
If a number of veteran posters indicate one poster is misreading or misinterpreting a fellow poster and remain unconvinced by the arguments that poster sets forth, it's not proof that this one poster is wrong, but it's a serious indication that he might be, and he ought have a second and third look at his position- and the input from others- to discern whether or not he is.
Nobody is rallying to fight my battles for me, WOTF. They're rallying to fight their battles. We just happen to have common cause in some areas. They know I don't need a champion. They also no doubt know that additional perspectives can be a boon to understanding and to building bridges between people in a debate. They probably also know that it can be valuable at times for more than one person to voice what several think, especially if there is no consensus. Whatever their reasons, you should treat them as seperate individuals, not as "my assistants", for they decidedly are not, and you do them an injustice if you deem them so and an insult if you treat them so.
Similarly, when posters argued against the "offensive" view I posted earlier, I should consider it carefully.
I do. I'm still doing that. I had a couple hours walk to think about it. I've been thinking about it for years. Discussing it with people. Measuring my views against others. Picking the whole apart, cleaning it and reassembling it, checking to see that the parts move as they need to. Letting others judge the quality of each and every one of those parts. And, incidentally, this is just a tiny cog you find offensive, a part of a greater whole, a part that is itself comprised of a million smaller parts.
To some, it made sense right away. To others, it still doesn't. I may be wrong, but so far, the evidence, direct and indirect, doesn't seem to support that conclusion. But I'll still reassess, as I continually do, because conviction should never be so firm as to exclude other possibilities, nor built on any other foundation than having stood the test of time, of having had other views and the minds that hold them pitted against it repeatedly without chipping or shattering. This thread was part of that, but that aspect had largely played out by the time of your reply, just as the original topic had largely played out by the time it evolved into the tangent that you took offense at.
Just as well, too, as good thoughts need time to digest.
Here's a good thought: I condemn what happened in Boston, explicitly and emphatically. Please digest it.
I wish you well,
— Aswad.
Edit¹: Missed a section heading.
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