Bali
Shock, disgust and indignation moving toward prejudice, aggression and hate were my original feelings over yet another terrorist attack - the results of which I have stayed up all night watching on BBC and CNN. These have given way to thinking and doing my best to achieve some form of empathy for the perpetrator in an attempt to understand why they would commit such a random act of violence against their fellow men, and (not counting the tourists - who undoubtably were the intended targets) their brothers and sisters in Islam. After a few hours of thought I suspect that my initial feelings are what the bombers are aiming for - a fractured world of them and us based on hate, mutual revulsion and a complete lack of sympathy, empathy or understanding of each others values systems.
It was in reading some of Thomas More's "Utopia" during the non-Bali news that it became clear to me that we have an obligation to think and never to accept things at face value. He was refering to the mechanisms of state and the nature of government and it's role in our lives - and this is appropriately enough what the bombers are ostensibly fighting against. They are fighting against the imposition of government by proxy (via economic leverage), primarily by the rich, white west. If, in reacting with understandable horror and disgust we abandon reason, and allow emotions to rule our reactions then the bombers have won. However, if we think and apply cognitive process, and apply the results of this process in an attempt to remove the reasons for Jihad/War/Terror, then we may convert these armies of dread into paper tigers.
Machiavelli in Il Principe suggests all manner of ways of controllong people, and their reactions to circumstance through manipulation of fact, fiction, and emotion. The terrorists are using similiar techniques to polarise the global population along lines of religion, wealth and ethnicity. We have a duty to fight them with the best tools available to us (not necessarily the easiest tools). Debt relief, investment, fair trade, good governance, education and respect. If we can win the hearts and minds of the common man through treating him fairly and with dignity, with respect for his beliefs and moral structures, rather than through unfair trading, the law of the gun and (possibly unitentional) prejudice (whether that is ethnic, religious or monetarily based), then we cut the roots of anger and foster mutual understanding. The terrorist won't disappear entirely, a small minority of people will always find a cause to kill for, but his ground swell of support and ability to disappear into the masses will start to evaporate. And much like a fish in a drying up lake, terrorist networks will start to choke and die.
If the above is true, then we need to consider how we can start to treat people, whether they are black, white, brown or yellow, with equality. We need to re-priotise, and rather than spending $200 Billion on the articles of war ($200 Nillion being the projected dollar cost for the US in Iraq - and that excludes the other members of the "Coalition of the Willing"), we need to consider how else that money might be better, and more productively spent. Lets face it, the G8 has offered (without consulation with the world bank!) to write off $40 Billion of debt - by using future aid to pay current debt. How much better spent would that $200 Billion have been in writing off debt, building agricultural, industrial, civil and governmental infrastructure as investment? It seems self evident to me that investing $200 Billion in helping people improve their lives would have a far longer reaching positive impact on reducing terrorism than spending it on Patriot missiles, RPG's, Stingers and M16's. Weapons, once unsheathed, are no longer investments in deterrance. They are an unregainable cost - that rarely show a good return on the inital capital investment - not so investment in people.
In conclusion I find it astonishing that the US, indeed the world, has still not learnt the lessons of Vietnam. US National Intelligence Estimates prior to the collapse of the French colony (as early as 1956 during the Geneva Conference!) pointed out that control of the fundamental commodities of life was the key to success in South East Asia. The provision of the most basic staple, rice, was more powerful than political propoganda or strength of arms. The peasant farmer would not raise up, or more importantly support an uprising, against the hand that fed it. Eisenhower ignored this and paid attention to Diem's misdirection and wayang (Opera) and ended up in a war it could not win, against an enemy that, although brutal, paid attention to the maxim that dogs do not bite the hand that feed them.
It's not too late to apply this lesson to current global policies, all it requires is the political will to change policy, and pressure from us, the masses. To follow the reasoning of Socrates, and apply it to todays tragedy, no one knowingly does a bad thing - it is merely the lack of knowledge and a common reference point that turns our terrorist into another man's freedom fighter. So let's all acknowledge the problems, find a common point of reference and try to change the world.
1 Comments:
"control of the fundamental commodities of life was the key to success in South East Asia"
- Singapore a good example of this.
7:52 am
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