"That’s the stuff that drives me crazy—this response of more violence and more war to make us all safer actually creates more violence." - I hope that one day we realize this is true.
"Two of the 9/11 hijackers were on the CIA list and had trained with bin Laden in Afghanistan. They came into the country and [the CIA] failed to notify the FBI. We’re here 13 years later with 13 years of war, $4 trillion of money spent, occupied countries, and it was an intelligence failure that could have been corrected in a different way where we should have said, “Why did this happen? Some people should get fired, and let’s be smarter about this.” They had a handful of people that hated us, but now they’ve created entire generations. That’s the stuff that drives me crazy—this response of more violence and more war to make us all safer actually creates more violence."
"That’s the stuff that drives me crazy—this response of more violence and more war to make us all safer actually creates more violence."
Perhaps that's the goal. I've spent a long time trying to understand the grand chessboard of geopolitics and military strategy, and my general conclusion about the WOT is that it was designed as a destabilization program in the first place. Destabilization helps by allowing the jackals to manipulate the power structure to allow whatever the real objective(s) are. In the case of Iraq, for example, it was largely about two things: control of oil (not about getting oil for ourselves, but about controlling who did get it), because the real intellectual hawks (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kissinger, etc kind of people who persist in the beltway over decades) feel that Russia and China are the real threat as we move towards resource wars, and by extension Iran is a threat because it doesn't comply with our power structure. We isolated Iran with both Afghanistan and Iraq, and continue to allow both neo-cons and the hawkish left to isolate them even more. I don't think they understand the gravity of such actions though.
I gave Wartard some pointers on this article that is worth a read if you are interested in this sort of subject matter.
Anyway, I digress, the point is that we need to acknowledge and accept that actual national security from terrorism has never been the primary goal, and instead is the cover for the perceived national security situation that is soon to be here, namely, a neo-cold war era of global resource and economic wars. Until this fact is acknowledged, I will continue to be disappointed in journalists who simply stop at "but we are creating more terrorists!" and don't move on the the bigger picture of why this is the current state of the union.
There's a general bigger picture perspective that goes something like this: "Government is a disease masquerading as it's own cure." EG: Government creates problems in order to justify more power by claiming it needs the power (or money) to solve the problem.
It's not just the War on Terror. The war on drugs has had a similar effect -- drug enforcement focusing on importation, incentivizes more concentrated drugs allowing for profit per pound in smuggling operations. These drugs happen to also be more addictive. Cocoa Leaves -> Cocaine -> Crack
In fact, I submit you can probably find a similar effect in every "grand effort" at the federal level that gets called a "war".
"but the Chinese did manage to sneak a diesel powered sub into the middle of a carrier group during USN exercises off Taiwan in 2006."
I was stationed in Japan when I was in the Navy and just missed this little event. Supposedly the sub surfaced directly in front of the Kittyhawk. Shortly thereafter, the Kittyhawk went into General Quarters.
Just wow. Great post and the linked blog post was also fascinating. I find it almost incredulous that there are people in the throws of power who play this as a game with the lives of billions hanging by a thread in their hands.
it was never a handful of people, the US is a convenient bogey man regardless of its actions. Combined with the revulsion that Islam in that area has for Western culture and its not likely anything we do one or another has much effect.
Blaming the Iraq war for their dislike of us is about as silly as it gets, they didn't like us before. The key differences now is that technology allows such groups to better organize than ever before.
> "Blaming the Iraq war for their dislike of us is about as silly as it gets, they didn't like us before."
Actually, I'd love to hear a better explanation for the Iraq war. Because I've not heard one that wasn't silly.
Iraqi's didn't like us and didn't like us before? Have you met many Iraqis? Remember this was a relatively modern, westernish country. The average Iraqi liked america, our freedom, and wish they could be liberated from Saddam. (this is not a justification for the war with Iraq, in my mind, but neither is the 9/11 event which involved Saudis and had no apparent connection to Iraq.)
How about Iranians. Do you think Iranians hate westerners? Reports from people visiting Iran, and the Iranians I have known disagree with that position. Again, also a relatively modern society, though with an even more religious government than Iraq.
I think you might be making the mistake that many make of conflating the views of "leaders" (often self described) or "government" with "the people".
On the other hand, take an individual Iraqi or Afghani father, who lost his wife and kids to a drone attack that only killed civilians. Do you think he might hate america? Quite possibly. But that was not "before", that is only "since" the drone attacks started.
I imagine there are many kids who were teenagers who lost their fathers and or mothers to drone attacks in the last 10 years who will grow up to hate americans, and some of them may turn out to be terrorists.
The "War on terrorism" is using tactics that create terrorists.
There is a difference between a general dislike and an active dislike. There are plenty of people there who will blame the US for specific deaths of people close to them. This motivates people a lot more than some general "I don't like those people much" idea.
> Blaming the Iraq war for their dislike of us is about as silly as it gets, they didn't like us before.
Which Iraq war are you referring to? Iraq -- people and government -- was generally favorable to the US prior to the 1991 war. For generally diametrically opposed reasons between the government and large segments of the populace, that was significantly less true prior to the 2003 war (the government was anti-US for the US fighting the 1991 war, large segments of the populace that weren't favorable to the government were less pro-US than before the 1991 war because they felt betrayed by not being supported by the US in the aftermath of that war.) But certainly there were a whole new set of sources of anti-US sentiment resulting from the conduct of the 2003 war and, perhaps more importantly, the occupation after the defeat of Saddam's regime.
Religion is indeed a powerful motivator, and interpreted certain ways is very dangerous. However, we don't do ourselves any favors by pushing sympathetic moderates towards extremism by waging wars that only serve to open a power vacuum.
The world would be safer without religions that deny the rights of others to exist, and would also be safer if violence hadn't been used to encourage more membership in those religions that promote violence.
> However, we don't do ourselves any favors by pushing sympathetic moderates towards extremism by waging wars that only serve to open a power vacuum.
The law of unintended consequences is a tricky beast. I have pasted this link before, but it bears repeating. It's thorny by design, and happens to snide at US - but they are certainly not the only ones who have succesfully created their own enemies. Usually by supporting and funding earlier allies.
IIRC Iran was a massive source of counterfeit US dollars in the 1980's and early 1990's. The reason? The last Shah of Persia was supported by the US and was even provided with a mint-quality printing press. [0][1] When he fled the country after the 1979 uprising, the printing press was left behind.
Not as much as you think. The government has little power, and generals are always vulnerable to make decisions based on the lucre put at their disposal.
Radical Islam will always go on doing its thing, as long as it has gas to burn. Curiously, the entire West is unwilling to go after the people pulling the strings of radical movements - those who give them money, holed up in so-called 'allies' of the West - Saudi Arabia, Qatar and more.
We will go on for decades killing grunts of Radical Islam, all while they take the lives of countless innocents, and not be one inch closer to ending with it. If we had put the sheiks and Imams funding Al Qaeda/ISIS/Hamas/Boko Haram/etc. in prison and frozen their assets, those movements would have died off years ago.
I am interested in finding out more on the funds provided to terrorists groups from Imams and Sheiks in Qatar and Saudi. Can you share some links(concrete evidence)that informed you about this hypothesis?
I don't know the details myself, but it is a position shared by U.S. officials that Saudis are Al Qaeda's prime backers, though not stated officially (it was exposed by Bradley Manning's embassy cable leaks):
