Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- Red Action http://www.redaction.org/news/sept_01.html#15_09_01 WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD =========================== 15th Sept '01 There is a scene in Godfather Two where Michael Corleone, on a visit to Batista's Cuba with a view to sanctioning large scale mob investment there, witnesses a man deliberately sacrifice himself by secreting a bomb on his person in order to kill a carload of policemen. Horrified at what such fanaticism might mean for business, all plans in regard to investment in Cuba were instantly cancelled. After all, if people are willingly prepared to give up their own lives for some cause or other who do you threaten them with? This is the situation America now faces. In all the hand wringing after September 11 this crucial dimension has by and large been ignored. Instead we have spokesmen tell of the 'cowardly' perpetrators who can 'run but cannot hide'. Experience shows that they can and do. Except that on this occasion the hands-on bombers are already dead. Not just one nut or two, but at least four highly organised, highly skilled, not to say highly motivated teams of assassins. What motivated them? How many more are there? Is this the end or the beginning of the campaign to make Uncle Sam cry uncle? So far these questions have not been seriously addressed; considerations at present seemingly for wimps only. America according to its President is going to war. He is assembling the world to 'kick ass'. Whose ass is moot. But as George Bush seems to think it is a matter of rooting out these 'folks ', raising a posse is after all the first thing a man does in such circumstances. Get a posse and hunt them down, or bomb them flat. But what if the 'them' is Afghanistan? Well, America could cite Cambodia as a precedent. Of course the slaughter from the air of an innocent country against which America was not at war, but deemed to be harbouring terrorists, did not help America defeat the Viet Cong, but it didn't do it any harm either. Cambodia did not, and could not reply in kind. Had they been capable of doing so would such barbarity have been considered even at a time when America was prepared to shed a little blood for the cause? In the coming days it will dawn on many that the outright expressions of support for America in the immediate aftermath of the demolition of the World Trade Centre may have been a little hasty. Diplomacy may have demanded it, not withstanding American body language suggests blood sacrifice on an enormous scale. What would be a proportionate response to the deaths of 20,000 Americans? 200,000? 2,000,000? Put another away how many innocents will America have to obliterate to a) teach the rag-heads a lesson and b) prevent it happening again? It is the second question that American strategists will be most concerned with. For the fact is that the question of revenge and prevention are, as is so often the case, in conflict. If America satisfies itself in regard to a, then it has to understand all considerations with regard to b must be dismissed. For the greater the apocalypse visited, the more savage ultimately will be the response. Fine if its Cambodia, Panama or Grenada. But this time they are not dealing with a nation state. They are confronting a mass of people who regard America as the source of all their woes. Punish them all? How? Many of the most desperate are already living in near stone-age conditions. If the threat is to bomb say Afghanistan 'into the Dark Ages' as was made against Iraq, then America should be aware that the Russians and the Taliban have beaten them to it. In addition suicide-bombers are hardly novel in the region. So despairing are many of these volunteers that the act of martyrdom seemingly supersedes the desire to kill the enemy in any significant numbers. Not so the Trade Centre operatives. This was something more than a personal gesture. This was intended to hurt. And it did. Make no mistake about it America has been wounded. For the first time in its history it knows the sheer awe that follows large-scale civilian destruction. This time it is Americans who are the victims of 'collateral damage'. All America is now painfully aware that politics matters, that what its leaders do over there will have an impact over here. They know it and so do America's enemy's. America is no longer immune. A whole new ball game as they say. The response we are told is that Americans, who in Balkans dropped bombs from 15,000 feet in order to avoid any military casualties whatsoever, now want blood. More pertinently, they are prepared to lose some to shed some. Get the bastards and to hell with the consequences is the current mood, or so we are informed. A far cry from when a few mobile phone threats from Osama Bin Laden had prompted President Bush to withdraw the FBI from Yemen, a US Marine contingent from Jordan and the US fifth fleet from its home base in the Gulf. On top of that the reason the security services had no inkling of any such attack is because the CIA amazingly, has no operatives of any sort in the region. Understandably, talking tough and hanging out in Langley West Virginia is more attractive than penetrating the followers of Bin Laden and living thereafter a life, for as long as it lasts, dominated by diarrohea. And if such lack of resolve has certainly emboldened fundamentalism, imagine what September 11 has done. Not to mention the performance of President Bush the leader of the 'civilised' world. As soon as news reached him, his immediate concern was for his own safety. He fled, hiding out in Nebraska and not even daring to surface until the coast was clear. This apparently is not a man to whom it is necessary to stress the word caution. Yet the influential New York Times did so anyway urging the President to avoid at all costs any entanglement with Afghanistan, a country who for centuries, it warned, has been the "battleground and graveyard for the interests of great powers." America's 'interests' rather than pride, or its people, has long been America's governing philosophy. Thus literally before the dust settles, government policy will already have rejected the 'make my day' promptings of the Dirty Harry's for the more pragmatic realpolitik of that other great American icon Michael Corleone. Which means that if there is any dramatic change in foreign policy it is far more likely to be in a political rather than military sphere. If so, it is not Afghanistan but Israel who should be worried. ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [email protected] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
