Posted on 06/29/2002 2:14:47 PM PDT by Valin
To be emblematic of our age is to bear an evil burden. The twentieth century, scarcely finished, will be remembered as much for its succession of wars and genocides as it will for anything else; and sadly the dawn of the new millennium has brought no end to this horrifying tradition. The first year of the twenty-first century produced images that will likely identify the decade, if not the generation, to come: commercial aircraft, hijacked by agents of extremism, slamming into crowded, unprotected office buildings, bringing about the collapse of those structures and the deaths of thousands of people.
How can we have come to this? How can we have reached a moment in history when men professing to be soldiers serving a cause are capable not only of committing such atrocities but of calling them acts of war?
In this era of ethnic and religious strife we know only too well that human conflict is often inexplicably savage; and yet there were and remain questions about the events of September 11, 2001, that seem to defy even our sadly overdeveloped inurement to horror. The cacophony produced by media sensationalists and television talking heads, a continuous aspect of daily life since the attacks, has done nothing more than crystallize these basic questions, which have gone on to embed themselves in the minds of citizens in every country facing the threat of what has, over the last generation, become known as "international terrorism." As the initial assaults in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania have led to countermeasures and then, inevitably, to further outrages, these deep and troublesome queries have continued to work their way into the vulnerable fiber of the public psyche-for these are questions that do not admit of sound-bite solutions, that do not fade even as we see the architects of the massacres arrested, attacked, and killed:
How can we, how can human civilization, possibly have reached such a point?
The immediate causes of the current crisis have been discussed to such a numbing extent that they have attained for many people a somewhat rote quality: again and again stories are disseminated about the grievances and fanaticism of extremists from nations in the Middle East and Asia, about the morally ambiguous economic expansionism of the West, and about the inevitable clash between the two sides' religions, cultures, and wildly conflicting conceptions of how people should live. Yet these never-ending and finally overwhelming dissections seem somehow unequal to the events we are living through, never attaining commensurate scope or magnitude.
There is nothing inappropriate about this confusion, this sense of disconnection between lived facts and received commentary. Relatively few people alive today can recall with more than childhood vagueness the last time that civilization faced such a truly epochal moment; and of those few who are old enough to have participated in the struggle against fascism and totalitarianism during the middle of the twentieth century, there are almost certainly none who are actively making executive decisions about the content of television programming or newspaper and magazine articles. Even if there were, television, newspapers, and magazines cannot supply the proper context for studies of what we are experiencing, since they are at best shortsighted records of recent happenings and at worst mere entertainment disguised as thought. Epochal moments belong rightly to history, and it is history that holds the only hope of providing an understanding of the twisted road that has brought us to this frightening pass.
This brief book is intended to provide an introduction to the historical roots of modern international terrorism by placing that phenomenon squarely within the discipline of military history, rather than political science or sociology. It will be proposed that what has to date been viewed and treated as a uniquely modern problem is in fact the current stage in a violent evolution whose origins extend as far back as does human conflict itself: terrorism, in other words, is simply the contemporary name given to, and the modern permutation of, warfare deliberately waged against civilians with the purpose of destroying their will to support either leaders or policies that the agents of such violence find objectionable.
Bloodshed of this kind is quite distinct from what many now label (often with utter disingenuousness) "collateral damage"-that is, accidental casualties inflicted on civilians by warring military units. Yet like collateral damage, deliberate warfare against civilians has always been with us and cannot be truly understood out of context. Any examination of its historical origins must therefore rest on numerous specific precedents if it is to contribute to a deeper and more productive discussion of our present crisis. That such discussion continues to be necessary at all levels of society, regardless of the day-to-day development of events and policies that affect particular aspects of our current predicament, is indicated by a difficult but ongoing problem: although terrorists themselves must bear the principal culpability for their activities, violent and otherwise, citizens and leaders of the nations and communities in which they have chosen to create their particular form of hell cannot completely escape responsibility, for we have either misunderstood or ignored both the origins and nature of the threat to an extent sufficient to have made the work of its perpetrators far easier.
To contend as much, in the light of recent events, smacks dangerously of blaming the victim; yet when we understand just how this form of violence fits into the record of human conflict, we will see that such terms as victim and perpetrator attain altered definitions-as, indeed, does the word terrorism itself.
Over the past forty years, American and other world leaders have generally identified international terrorism (as distinct from domestic terrorism, which falls outside the scope of this study) as a type of crime, in an effort to rally global indignation against the agents of such mayhem and deny them the more respected status of actual soldiers. Even since the September 11 attacks caused many such leaders to acknowledge a global "war" against terrorists, for example, the actions of those terrorists have been described more often as "criminal" than as "belligerent." And to be sure, before they developed the tactic of turning commercial airplanes into ballistic missiles, terrorists' typical behavior (whether assassination, kidnapping, or bombing) was often indistinguishable from that of common criminals. In addition, terrorist causes frequently attracted-and still do attract-individuals who simply use philosophical or political rationalizations to veil their more fundamental greed and bloodlust: as has been noted of late, terrorist organizations-with their money laundering, drug dealing, and forgery experts-bear more than a passing resemblance to the families of organized crime.
Excerpted from The Lessons of Terror by Caleb Carr Copyright 2002 by Caleb Carr. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Carr's Nine-Point Plan on How U.S. Should Fight Terrorism 1. Eliminate the CIA: Osama bin Laden is the product of the height of CIA folly, the training, arming, and sponsorship of the Afghan mujahidin during the 1980s. There isn't a more powerful sign to other countries that the U.S. intends in future to change the way it does global business than abolishing the CIA and other covert operations by U.S. intelligence agencies. 2. Move the CIA's Operational Activities to the Military Units
3. Abandon Long-Range Bombardment: or, at least demote it to a very circumscribed support role — as with Iraq, it galvanizes more than breaks people
4. Prepare to Act Alone: In 1986, President Regan made no attempt to build a coalition against Qaddafi for his successful assault of the dictator's compound. To build a coalition would only have served the same purpose it did later in Iraq, and more recently, Afghanistan: to alert the enemy that we were coming.
5. Enhance Tactical Air Units
6. Deploy Innovative Weaponry: for example, the RQ Predator, a long-endurance, medium altitude, unmanned aircraft that is remote-controlled and can be fitted with explosive payloads.
7. Identify Exactly Who We're Fighting Against: The confusion over whom we were at war with in the Persian Gulf contributed heavily to the toll among non-combatants. When setting new objectives for this progressive military machine, clearly identify who exactly, in a given struggle, we're fighting against.
8. Take More Active Means of Defense: Follow the advice of George Shultz and take appropriate preventive or preemptive actions against terrorist groups before they strike (much like heading into the Phillippines.)
9. Create and Overall New Military Philosophy: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has attemped this. The philosophy must not simply be more elaborate weapon programs and strategies, but an ethical philosophy that grows from the principle of military and political self-interest only.
© 2002 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
I've just finished the Audio version of the book, he makes some good points. It might be worth your time.
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