>are you on this line of reasoning: most terrorist organizations claim
>responsibility, since they commit the act exactly to gain attention
>(towards themselves and their cause), and since ObL has not, coupled
>with the lack of published evidence against him, that makes the case
>against him very weak?
while i think it's important to keep pointing out that we don't know who actually did this and that the administration has spun a case against ObL, Al Qaeda and the Taliban for self-interested reasons (OIL), this is mainly because i think it serves anti-war interests to keep that one up as a way of delegitimating the US response since i AM relatively certain that the Keystone Kops will fuck up.
i have been editing and fact-checking a book on asymmetical warfare (terrorism and counter terrorism) this a.m. even before i started this project, it's been nagging at me, these questions, even before i've been exposed to the supposed "mind of the terrorist" reading this book:
1. why do we think this is over?
2. if this was only the beginning, what if there are more terrorists strikes? let's say they are prepared for retaliation and, after patiently waiting for the hysteria to subside, they respond to our counter-strikes with fresh acts of terrorism. i see no reason not to think that this is a highly likely scenario. (refusing to claim responsibility is key here in order to continue to manipulate and exploit asymmetry.
3. what position do we take then. the only reason we don't see 9-11 as an act of war was because it wasn't pursued according to "the rules of war". but those rules don't apply under asymmetrical conditions.
i suppose if you're true blue marxist, the only answer is to keep building an anti-war movement. this will be exceedingly difficult if there are more terrorist attacks.
i suppose, also, that if you're true blue, then it's time to start recognizing that this is the beginning of the revolution in so far as empire is being attacked -- for what yet, we're not sure, but maybe soon enough.
is it the revo, though? is it a revolution against capital as Marx would have predicted? i think someone said in all this that it doesn't matter what motivates this attack on empire.
so, what if it's a revo against empire motivated by the desire to maintain control over one's oil/gas reserves?
what if it's a revo, in part, against the Great Satan --and how condescending and patronizing to sit around and tell the leaders of this hypothesized revo that, whatever motivations they have, if they are articulated according to a religious discourse, then they are falsely conscious... who's going to work with them in order to advance their consciousness so they understand that it's really about class warfare?
are we going to join forces with this revo and start fighting empire in terrorist attacks against it? like communists went off to fight the fascists?