[lbo-talk] Bush admin pressed Brits to arrest suspects

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Mon Aug 14 08:50:24 PDT 2006


Carl:

That's easy. No motivation for Islamic terrorism = no Islamic terrorists. Ideally, the US should declare war on Israel. Short of that, the US should break off all relations with Israel -- providing no funding of any kind, no trade, no weapons, no spare parts, no sharing of intelligence, no cooperation whatsoever - nada, zip, zero, zilch. The US could easily make Israel the most isolated pariah state of all history. That would go a long way to promote US-Islamic amity.

[WS:] That assumes that targets of various terrorist activities - state sponsored or otherwise - are the intended primary targets, rather than targets of opportunity. I think the latter is usually the case. For example, State A wants to hit State B, but cannot do this without facing major consequences. Therefore, they decide t hit one of the B's client states as a proxy. Oftentimes even that may be too risky, so A uses its client state to hit B's client as a proxy.

Another thing is internal politics, in which attacking foreign straw men is either a diversion or a way of attacking internal interest groups. The Argentine invasion of the Falklands may be a good example. As I understand, in major rift line in Islamic countries is that between Muslim fundamentalists and secular modernists who often align themselves with the West. In this scenario, the US is fundamentally a punching boy in a similar was as Cuba and North Korea serving as punching boys in the US politics.

In sum, I do not believe in the "blowback" theory because it makes certain untenable assumptions about the nature and capabilities of the US foreign policy, which can be summarized as a "Great Satan." The reality, I believe is far more complex, and the Satan is not as great and scary as depicted. The US is a target not because of what it is - according to either the left (they hate for what we did to them) or the right (they hate because we love freedom) - but because someone else, pardon the metaphor, found it convenient to wipe his ass with our proud and beautiful country (just like US presidents wipe theirs with Cuba or North Korea.)

Wojtek



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