The definitive victory of terrorists isn’t the number of victims they actually kill in reality but the distortion of perception they induce among the masses. Zillions $ have been spent on security around the whole world to prevent terrorist acts which, in the end -save 9/11 which cannot happen twice- can kill a very limited score of people. Granted, some security measures are necessary (particularly in the flying business) but overall the money (by the billions, really) that is spent on totally unnecessary precautions could save thousands of people, be it used wisely to fight diseases or by strictly implementing the basic rules of road driving safety.
It looks like (and it is admissible, given the context) the US was all in a frantic chase of murderous terrorists some weeks after 9/11 because of a purported planned attack against indiscriminate citizens with anthrax. In the end, only 3 persons died and the whole thing petered out… That’s where lays the core raison d’être of terrorism: to alter the perception of reality and eventually change reality. Not directly but by making potential victims of terrorism change reality themselves out of their “free will”. In that sense, you need not to be killed or even maimed to be a victim of terrorism.
By refusing to assess reality as it is but rather participating in the distortion of said reality by nurturing the fear factor, you simply are contributing to the terrorists’ strategy and victory. By calling to endless security measures with no end in sight you’re simply turning yourself into a terrorist.
Every other six month we're told that a terrorist scheme that would have caused havoc beyond imagination has been uncovered in the U.S and then... the sound of cricket.
Next July the Olympics will be held in London where they're now putting in place anti terrorist devices consisting of mega sound generators and even missiles (see the Guardian)! We'll soon learn that the Battle of Britain was a joke.
Also, there is this project of having just everybody sous surveillance téléphonique in the UK in the vain "hope" that wannabe terrorists shall be caught before they start implementing their terrible plots.
Sheer madness. Le propre du terrorisme is to be like a flea in the desert with twelve aircraft carriers, twenty nuclear submarines, five thousands jets and two infantry divisions excavating 2 million square miles in order not to find the flea...
It cost Ben Laden something like some thousand $ + 20 airplane tickets to achieve his goal and the West has wasted innumerable millions $ in response.
Was the U.S supposed not to react the way it did after 9/11 people would ask? Probably not and this is the second reason why OBL won the war: he induced a global change of attitude within the West which has increased the level of its already paranoiac stance. The media should not be forgotten regarding the help it has provided in nurturing the fear factor in the minds of several hundred million people in the world.
Thank god, we've lost the Olympics!
Every other six month we're told that a terrorist scheme that would have caused havoc beyond imagination has been uncovered in the U.S and then... the sound of cricket.
Next July the Olympics will be held in London where they're now putting in place anti terrorist devices consisting of mega sound generators and even missiles (see the Guardian)! We'll soon learn that the Battle of Britain was a joke.
Also, there is this project of having just everybody sous surveillance téléphonique in the UK in the vain "hope" that wannabe terrorists shall be caught before they start implementing their terrible plots.
Sheer madness. Le propre du terrorisme is to be like a flea in the desert with twelve aircraft carriers, twenty nuclear submarines, five thousands jets and two infantry divisions excavating 2 million square miles in order not to find the flea...
It cost Ben Laden something like some thousand $ + 20 airplane tickets to achieve his goal and the West has wasted innumerable millions $ in response.
Was the U.S supposed not to react the way it did after 9/11 people would ask? Probably not and this is the second reason why OBL won the war: he induced a global change of attitude within the West which has increased the level of its already paranoiac stance. The media should not be forgotten regarding the help it has provided in nurturing the fear factor in the minds of several hundred million people in the world.
Thank god, we've lost the Olympics!
21 commentaires:
Last week a deranged woman had an American airplane derouted.
Like is customary now, two F16s were deployed to accompagny the airplane to the nearest airport.
So, had it been a real terrorist they would have shot the plane down in order to prevent said terrorist to perform the act hself?
The Olympic Games themselves are an enormous waste of public money just to stage them. The Olympics are a non-democratic privately owned and run organization and every four years they receive tens of millions of dollars from the organizing city that "won" the rights to stage them.
So there are local taxes and undoubtedly national ones that subsidize this useless event. If the Olympics Committee wants to put on their games, let them pay for them themselves.
The same applies to a much lesser extent to Formula One and it's arrogant owner, Bernie.
"The Olympics are a non-democratic privately owned and run organization"
C'est ce qu'apparemment Bertrand Delanoé ne savait pas puisqu'il a avoué sa naïveté après que Londres a été désignée comme ville organisatrice.
Il croyait encore à la fête de la jeunesse, du sport, de l'amitié universelle, de la fraternité dans l'humanisme partagé whereas Tony Blair was meeting each and every delegate of the IOC with his bottomless checkbook at the ready.
Thanks to Delanoe's naivete, the raise of my local taxes will be limited (they've already known a 50% increase in the last four years!) and in the meantime Brits and Londoners will see theirs skyrocketing! Like they needed that in this time of financial breakdown ☺
What's more, if foreign visitors to the Olympics from the US or Asia want to pay a visit to Paris, it's less than one hour flight or two hours with the Eurostar.
Flocon: If OBL had announced that his goal was to change our behavior so that the infidel dogs were frustrated in long security lines at airports, humiliated by body searches at the gates, and worried by NSA data mining of their emails for groups of words like "detonate the underpants bomb on the airplane" or "blow up the shopping mall", I would agree that he achieved victory.
But his speeches, both public and confidential to his organization, set out a different definition of victory. His goals were to cause the US to leave the Middle East, to cause the US to cease support of Israel, to set up an Islamic Caliphate that would unite the Muslim world, to lead this Caliphate to regain control over lands lost to the Christian and Jewish infidels, and to cow the US into subservience to Muslim rule.
Instead, the behavior change he got was the US unseated the only functioning Islamic Emirate that met OBL's standards, remained unwavering in support of Israel, and killed or captured almost all of the leadership of his organization, including him. The survivors count the hours until a drone missile comes through the window or a US special operations team comes through the door.
I argue that this is not the behavior change he sought.
SemperFidelis
Sorry for the delay SemperFidelis,
When historical events are looked at from a certain perspective in order to assess the circumstances that made them happen, how the drama unfurled and what their short, medium and long term consequences were, quite a good number of criteria are necessary to get a reasonably informed opinion about them.
A "reasoning" with arguments are proposed in the post that your comment doesn't address at all, therefore their validity isn't even shaken.
On the other hand, your input introduces one criteria among many others that could be taken into consideration so that it seems the conclusion apparently contradicts that of the post.
Fair game...
But I also may argue the premise of your demonstration re the definition OBL may have set out for victory.
Did he really dream of setting up an Islamic Caliphate bla bla bla, the U.S out of the M.E and cow the US into subservience to Muslim rule or is all this stuff (at least partly) what the media had led us to believe out of possibly some fragments of his speeches?
Also, which part in the discourse of an ideologically disturbed mind is to be considered rational and realistic and which part belongs to the realm of wishful thinking and symbolism?
Let us put aside the symbolic aspect of the whole thing and let's now consider crude reality like I did in the second part of the post.
Whatever OBL's purported goals and definition of victory were, fact is 6.400 us soldiers have been killed both in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is the most insignificant part of History, the US has spent trillions of $ that would still be in its coffers had OBL not existed, fear of terrorism impregnate the psyche of the whole West, innumerable millions of $ are spent fighting a war that now exists only in the mind of the victims with no end in sight.
You may argue that "this is not the behavior change he sought", fact is there was a before 9/11 and an after 9/11 whatever his goals and definition of victory were.
the behavior change he got was the US unseated the only functioning Islamic Emirate that met OBL's standards
Do you mean Afghanistan?
At the end of the day, one man and a dozen of its acolytes have achieved something on the battlefieldn so to sayn that has probably never be seen in History.
Neddless to say, this statement shouldn't be understood as a moral judgement placed upon OBL's acts of terrorism.
As pertains the Olympics, thank God, we've lost them to the British!
(Imagine they would be held in any American city... I can see what a totalitarian State would look like in the U.S regarding individual rights, freedom of speech etc.)
Also, pretending not to have lost the war because...
"the U.S killed or captured almost all of the leadership of his organization, including him. The survivors count the hours until a drone missile comes through the window or a US special operations team comes through the door."
seems to be a very questionable argument in my eyes.
If that were the case and OBL had not won (like the title and the content of the post suggests) because the US has killed him, the war should be over which wasn't the case last time I checked.
Now, if OBL hasn't won the war (and won't since he's dead) but the West, can you tell me why these useless anti-terrorist measures are still in place in the U.S and the controls, bodily search et al. are always implemented comme le sont tous les moyens de contrôle et d'écoute, en particulier en GB où il existe un projet de mise sur écoute de toute la population?
Too bad Norway also thought the war was over since OBL and most of his followers had been killed by the Seals etc.
Had the Norwegian authorities set up and implemented a functional antiterrorist program that would have permitted to identify Bervick as a dangerous wanna be terrorist, ninety-six Norwegians would still be alive.
It may be flattering to your nationalistic ego to believe the U.S has won the war OBL has lost, but as a matter of fact, it's the very opposite.
But now I may be entirely wrong and in that case I suggest you tell the news to the Brits: We've won the war folks, OBL has lost! Dismantle all these useless and nonsensical antiterrorist measures and stop wasting your pounds on that bloody whole thing.
Je continue...
To believe that OBL hasn't won the war because the US has killed him and his acolytes is like believing cancer has been won over because the cells at the beginning of the desease have been eradicated.
Or the war against drugs is finished and won because Afghanistan has been invaded and is now under American control...
To believe that OBL hasn't won the war because the US has killed him and his acolytes is like believing cancer has been won over because the cells at the beginning of the desease have been eradicated
Of course, cancer can never be cured. But it can be delayed for an indefinite period, and that is all one could hope for. One can never 'win' the war against cancer, just as one can never 'win' the war against terrorism/OBL/etc etc... but one does the best one can.
Flocon said:
Je continue
eh ben,..
Et la vie continue.... alas...
L'analogie avec le cancer est assez facile même si elle est pratique mais au fond n'est pas appropriée.
Le cancer concerne les individus et peut être létal, mais n'affecte pas les sociétés. Aucune société n'est en danger de quoi que ce soit à cause du terrorisme.
Since 9/11 maybe 400.000 Americans have died in car crashes (more or less 40.000/year. Notwithstanding hundreds if not thousands of firearms casualties.
Trayvon Martin has been shot dead but thank god he wasn't a victim of indiscriminate Islamo-fascist terrorism.
Bathtub terrorism
La victoire des terroriste est de faire croire qu'ils représentent un danger comparable aux vraies guerres alors que bien sûr il n'en est rien.
Il est évident que les politiques se servent du "terrorisme" like they would with the big bad woolf or the Werewoolf. Be scare and submit or we won't be in a position to protect you from those who want to harm you.
You may remember this nearly two year old post.
Il y en a un autre que je ne retrouve pas where our former Ministre de l'intérieur informait que jamais la menace terroriste n'abait été aussi élevée à Paris... yeah sure.
Keep us occupied with pie in the sky like the Queen of England 60 th blablabla.
So it happens that no later than today Abou Yahia al Libi has been killed by a US drone in Pakistan.
Oh great, hoorray! We've won the war and dealt these devilish terrorists a decisive blow.
Yes, ten years later some individuals are killed after they've wrought havoc at an incommensurable cost and, worse, have instilled fear in the minds of hundreds of people in the world (with the benevolent help of the rulers and their media).
It's like Israel sentencing and executing Adolf Eichman 15 years after the end of the (real) war. Not that he didn't have to be convicted et al. but did Israel won the war because someone was captured and convicted? Of course not, who could pretend otherwise?
I understand everybody will go and speak of a great victory against terrorism with the killing of A.Q's #2 leader or whatever but the whole thing is so disproportionate that it belongs to the farcical/tragical/hysterical department of the Société of the spectacle (interesting read by the way).
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Next post will be about SemperFidelis being a Marxist and not knowing about it...
About Abou Yahia al Libi being executed the way he was in a foreign country with no judgement nor fair trial, whereas he was probably sleeping or sipping tea with his friends or family, how legal is that?
But I'm not worried about such insignificant detail: lawyers will manage to justify the unjustifiable like he was a combatant enemy...
I must have missed the post about Ned being a Jesuit and not knowing about it...
SemperFidelis
The story is told in Ned's diary but I don't delve into ladies' private lives. But wait until you hear about Anijo when she was a neokantian gambling nun in Las Vegas...
And then there's Flocon's secret life as a Kabbalistic katsa.
Perhaps we should all just move one chair to the left....
SemperFidelis
or one chair to the right...
or move all of the chairs to the center...
Flocon, I am still trying to figure out in your June 3 post what you meant by "Neddless to say". Does it mean you wrote on your own and didn't need me, at least for inspiration?:)
Ned,
"Does it mean you wrote on your own and didn't need me, at least for inspiration?:)
Oh no, no, I do need you (and badly at that!)
Just some days ago my position received support from no less than the American Secretary of State.
Apparently the war is still not won. Also she mentions terrorists by the hundred of thousands but exactly who is a terrorist (the notion is quite expandable it seems...)?
Just some months ago in Libya the terrorists (according to Gaddhafi) had to be destroyed to the very last but now they're ruling the country. What's more, said terrorists were given a massive help by the West...
In Turkey or Burma among others, their definition of terrorists may not be fit the one of the West. And see China and Tibetans.
I was mentioning Eichman. At least Israel granted him a trial (not that he had much chances anyway).
No such waste of time with the US in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Every now and then we hear or read that an American drone has killed purported terrorists in these countries.
How is it that they're terrorists if no trial has been set up to decide they were such?
They're terrorists we're told. Which evidence is there? What have they done exactly?
And the people they were with when the drone stroke, were they terrorists too? Maybe some of the purported terrorists were resting with their families and maybe were they no terrorists at all.
This is called State terrorism, indiscriminate killing of people who may be totally unrelated to terrorism, with no trial and no accountability for these murders.
Here is another victory for the terrorists: they've succeeded in showing the true nature of every State, be it democratic and bla bla bla: Basically it's Leviathan who runs the whole business. And said Leviathan doesn't like dissidents it can't control.
On a trip to the U.S., I went through three airports coming and going, making six, and had four different methods of security. One airport had one way of checking coming in and another going out.
On a second trip, CDG had a different method than when I went through a few months earlier.
My sister is on the heavy side and likes to wear ample, loose-fitting dresses. She also has rather large breasts and she gets taken for a body search most of the time she enters the U.S.
A hint: if you transfer through Dulles, walk as fast as you can to immigration control or you will have to wait forever. The worst reception I have seen. Best avoid it.
In the meantime, extreme right-wing supremecist terrorists are THE major threat in the U.S., but they are rarely described as such.
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