Charles Brown wrote:
>
> CB: So you think this bombing would have occurred anyway even if the British
> had not been part of the invasions ? You think the bombers didn't identify
> at all with the colored victims of the white British invasions ?
The condition and personal motivation of the individual terrorists probably has little effect on the actual occurrence of terrorism. Say that complex of psychological forces Q is _always_ necessary for someone to be a terrorist; but like a gene that only gets expressed under given environmental conditions, that motivation will seldom if ever get expressed except under certain conditions, and one necessary condition, it seems, is the presence of a dramatic suppression of some nationality with which the potential terrorist may identify him/herself (whether or not he/she is a member of that nationality).
For example: very possibly many, even most al Quaida terrorists don't really care that much about Iraq or Palestine -- but their 'real' motive or complex of motives would never have been triggered except by some such condition as the occupation of Palestine or Iraq. Analogy: Whitman I believe said that he was "boiling, boiling, boiling," but that some essay by Emerson set him off. Emerson didn't cause _Leaves of Grass_, but without Emerson (or some similar trigger) Whitman would not have produced the book. Similarly, probably Iraq didn't _cause_ the London bombings, but almost certainly those bombings would not have occurred without some such 'excuse' or trigger as Iraq. If people deliberately die (see the ww 2 "Ballad of Roger Young") they need to feel that they are dying for something. Roger Young might (for all anyone knows) have wanted to die, but it took a particular situation to activate that desire.
Carrol