There was no follow-up to 9-11 anywhere. The Intntl.Jihad movements whoever they may be had no organization and no strategy for absorbing the American riposte, e.g. the imposition of improved security within the US and attacks on the Jihadist infrastructure world-wide, the attack on Jihadist sanctuaries in Afghanistan and increased pressure on those in Pakistan, Syria and Lebanon, and so on. 9-11 did have some strategic impact, it closed down the NYC financial markets for a month. On the other hand, it was much more effectively used by the Jihadist's opposition to discipline their own publics to exchange basic freedoms for more security (even in places so irrelevant to any aspect of the Jihad strategy, as West Podunk, Nowhere USA), to mobilize powerful forces to attack the havens of Jihadist organization, to separate them from the clandestine support they were getting from ostensibly responsible nation states, and so on.
The recent action in King's Cross, London is even more counter-productive. The London gov. has been playing footsie with Jihadism for years, and even now after the attack we can hear some representatives of Her Majesty's government occasionally making silly noises of sympathy with the aims and methods of the Jihadists. But, the general effect of the London attack is already a clamp down on the local Islamic community and a tightening of security that will hamper the operation of Islamic liberation movements throughout Europe.
If you intend to win a war then you must frighten and frighten thoroughly, and the way this is done in war is through weapons of death and destruction. As Li Ch'uan put it: 'Weapons are tools of ill-omen.' and Sun Tsu adds to this: 'War is a grave matter; one is apprehensive lest men embark upon it with due reflection' (Sun Tsu Chapter 1, article 1) In war people die. In most wars most of the people so impacted are not combatants, and in global war this happens not only to brown and black people in Asia and Africa but also to white people in New York, Madrid, and London.
The fact that Middle Class, English speaking people are also dying in the global struggle for control of resources and of labour and what ever else, is truly lamentable, but hardly unexpectable. The real tragedy is the irrelevance of these demonstrations of anger and suffering for the resolution of the conditions they dramatize. People are killed and disabled for the sake of worthless expressions of anger and frustration (and I might add, for the continued enjoyment of the perks of "revolutionary leadership" by the Jihadist elites).
In conclusion, I for one do not "condemn liberals and the right when they apply a racist/imperialist discount to lives lost or irreparably harmed by expanding empire,". These are facts of life as it is lived in much of world, and it is only in those well-protected havens of Middle class rectitude, mostly in Europe and the US that one can imagine that world conditions are such that men can settle their differences with intelligent discourse and that imperialism and the response to it will be carried out with the greatest care to protect the very old, the very young, and of course anyone who does not handle a weapon. As Sun Tsu puts it the use of weapons should always be the last resort and used with the most serious and most rational intent, but once employed, any illusions that the proprieties and humanities of peaceful civil society will be preserved is delusional and deserving only of the most profound contempt. Oudeyis
----- Original Message ----- From: "paul childs" <npchilds at shaw.ca> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 21:31 Subject: [lbo-talk] Identity wars and other issues
> >While the critics and activists engage in melodrama, and like it or not
>>9-11 and most of the actions like it, are just drama, the truly powerful
>>foci of productive and political force develop and employ ever more
>>effective means to practical control of world conditions.
>
> The last time I went to see a drama several thousand people didn't die as
> buildings collapsed and tens of thousands more didn't die as a reaction to
> that 'drama'. This ideologically driven calculus of death, that somehow
> the deaths at WTC, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bali, London, Kenya and elsewhere
> can be seen as minor, marginal exchanges in the expansion and
> consolidation of global capital is obscene.
>
> We rightly condemn liberals and the right when they apply a
> racist/imperialist discount to lives lost or irreparably harmed by
> expanding empire, labelling 9/11 'just drama' is just as vile.
>
> PC
>
> N P Childs
>
> 'I'm Mister Bad Example, the stranger in the dirt,
> I like to have a good time and I don't care who gets hurt'.
>
>
> ___________________________________
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>