>All day, I've been thinking about the basic idea that there is no war
>on terrorism, because there are no terrorists and no terrorism. Yes,
>it's true, Islamic nutcases captured four flights and managed to fly
>three of them into WTC and the Pentagon five years ago. And it's also
>true that there are probably millions of people who would love to do
>the same for their own reasons.
The question is not whether there are people motivated to use terrorism against the west, but whether they are a threat, or at least a serious one. To call it a war is to imply that Islamic or any other terrorism is somehow a threat to the existence of something - whether that be a form of government, a way of life, or particular nation states.
As you say further on, you've got more chance of drowning in your own bathtub than being killed by a terrorist if you live in the US, or Britain, or Australia. So it is completely insane to treat the existence of a few terrorists as a threat of the same order as a world war. You might as well mobilise the entire resources of the nation for a war on sharks, because a negligible number of people are killed by shark attacks every year.
Although that isn't a good analogy either, because sharks are actual things you could conceivably wipe off the face of the earth, whereas terrorism is a tactic. You could make war on sharks. Its impossible to make war on a tactic.
But anyhow, you wouldn't make war on sharks, because they aren't a realistic threat to a nation or even a realistic threat to "our way of life". Likewise, nations don't declare war on the weather, even though it occasionally inflicts horrific disasters on humanity and is a far greater threat to humanity and especially our western "way of life" than Al Quaeda. Sensibly people recognise that there's only so much we can do about the weather, we can't wipe it out. We just have to put up with it. Take sensible precautions, but essentially live with it. There is a name for those who approach the threat differently and it implies mental illness.
Likewise terrorism. There's always been deranged people and there's always been a slight risk that any of us might fall victim to them. We live with it, the risk is slight and we take reasonable precautions, but it's like the weather, we can't expect to entirely eliminate the threat. But it isn't a threat to our way of life and certainly isn't a threat to our existence as a society in the same way as a military invasion. We don't call it a war.
>
>It might also be true that the US has captured a few of the people who
>were involved in some way with that event. But if that is true, why not
>make a show trial out of them? Explain all the horrific, evil,
>plotting and thinking that went into the great horror and drag it out
>for months on end?
>
>The cagey excuse that to proceed with an open prosecution would reveal
>too many state secrets is just too cute. Yeah, the only secret
>they are afraid of is their complete lack of evidence.
Spot on. There's been quite a bit of evidence that is is exactly the problem. The Australian terror trials have indicated this. Basically, the only way they can get convictions against their alleged plotters is to lower the bar. For instance the only convictions that have stood up (so far, appeals to come) are the ones against a bunch of loudmouths who were convicted of plotting terrorism on the basis of little more than loose talk. There was no specific plot, no specific target and the preparations amounted to nothing more than downloading a recipe from the internet, making enquiries about obtaining chemicals and bragging to impress their mates.
Bang! Away they go into solitary confinement for 20 years! That was easy, but a real trial under real laws requiring real evidence is a bit trickier. The Appeals Court wouldn't come at accepting evidence against another loud-mouth rat-bag "Jihad" Jack Thomas, obtained under threat of torture in Pakistan. And even before that, the Jury refused to convict him of any terrorism conspiracy anyhow.
The whole legal thing is completely hollow.
In fact the latest developments, moving these actual terrorist suspects into Guantonamo, is being reported here as a desperate attempt by the Bush admin to justify the case for the Congress to approve the legalisation of the kangaroo court system set up to convict the inmates of that Mickey Mouse jail.
As you say, the reason only a kangaroo court would convict the people at guantonamo is that not only are they small fry who haven't really done anything significant, but even if they had, the whole exercise of collecting intelligence has been so ham fisted and incompetent that the evidence wouldn't stand up in any court in the world.
>Consider the possibility that the US has absolutely nobody in any of
>its super secret gulag archipelagos who could be tried and convicted
>in open court. Nobody.
It isn't just a possibility, I think it is safe to assume that is the case. Though I suspect that some of these CIA prisoners are a bit more serious than the Guantanomo ones, they could have been convicted in a real court if the case against them hadn't been hopelessly tainted by the idiots who have kidnapped and tortured them.
Not only them either. There was the Bali bombing case, the Indonesian authorities needed one of those people held by the CIA to give evidence. The Americans refused, so the person got off on lesser charges. I think he's free again now. So well done CIA! I doubt this is the only example either.
>Fourteen? You mean after scouring the entire earth for five years with
>every police, national security, military, legal, illegal and
>electronic means available, including some completely imaginary tricks
>we invented especially for this purpose, we have exactly fourteen bad
>guys? Fourteen guys so bad, we can't tell you all their names or what
>they did.
>
>Well, I stand corrected.
Don't forget there's several hundred in Guantanamo Bay. But actual terrorist masterminds, well you wouldn't expect there to be many of them. You wouldn't expect the CIA to be up to the job of finding them anyhow. The ones they have would have been captured by someone else and handed over to the CIA for the bounty, the CIA couldn't organise a fuck in a brothel without help.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas