Posted on 09/11/2001 10:24:44 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
This is the end logic of terror. The long age of imperialism bequeathed to this century a world full of questions of who wronged whom, and who stole whose land, and what should be done. Those questions, far from finding resolution in the half-peace of the Cold War's aftermath, roil ever more. Absent the relative stability imposed by the war of the giants, the grievances of those upon whom the giants acted out their territorial ambitions have much more room to grow.In theory, this is not a bad thing. But there are two great problems. The first is that, in the end, the whole world was stolen from somebody, most of it repeatedly; there are claims and counterclaims and counter-counterclaims for every inch of the planet that is desirable and for much that is not. The second is that people (and the governments they form) do not like to give back what they have acquired, whether that acquisition is of dubious morality or not.
So, those with territorial claims turn to force. But here arises a third problem: By and large, the aggrieved do not possess the force necessary to win their way in open battle. Given this, a common response has been the use of terror: attacks by the aggrieved not on the soldiers of the enemy, but on the people of the enemy--on innocent victims, chosen at random, the more innocent and the more random, the better, tactically speaking.
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