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Helen Thomas Deviates From the Terrorism Script
Following up on Thursday's post concerning our collective refusal to discuss how American actions and policies fuel Terrorism: at a White House press conference yesterday with Janet Napolitano and John Brennan, Helen Thomas shows -- yet again -- that she's one of the very few White House reporters willing to deviate from approved orthodoxy scripts. She asks the prohibited question about the motives of Terrorists, and keeps asking as she receives complete non-responses, until they all just decide to ignore her:
Brennan's answer -- they do this because they're Evil and murderous -- is on the same condescending cartoon level as the "They-Hate-us-For-Our-Freedom" tripe we endured for the last eight years. Apparently, if Brennan is to be believed, Islamic radicals, in their motive-free quest to slaughter, write down the names of all the countries in the world and put them in a hat and then stick their hand in and select the one they will attack, and the U.S. just keeps getting unlucky and having its name randomly chosen. Countries like China, Brazil, Japan, Chile, Greece, South Africa, France and a whole slew of others must have really good luck. That Al Qaeda is evil and murderous and perverts Islam is a judgment about what they do, not an answer as to what motivates them.
The evidence of what motivates Terrorism when directed at the U.S. is so overwhelming and undeniable that it takes an extreme propagandist to pretend it doesn't exist. What is Brennan so afraid of? It's true that religious fanaticism is a part of their collective motivation, but why can't he just say what's so obviously true: "they claim that the U.S. is interfering in, occupying and bringing violence to their part of the world, they cite things like civilian deaths and our support for Israel and Guantanamo and torture, and claim that their terrorism is in retaliation"? Indeed, Brennan's boss, the President, has often claimed that things like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib help Al Qaeda recruitment (and it seems clear it was part of Abdulmutallab's hatred for the U.S.), so clearly U.S. actions are part of the motivation. Yet Brennan is afraid to acknowledge that not just past actions, but current ones, fuel the desire to target the U.S. for attacks. Speaking of fear of acknowledging reality, note how Charles Krauthammer in yesterday's column -- when mocking Obama's (obviously correct) view that Guantanamo helps fuel Al Qaeda recruitment -- describes the first two grievances cited in Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa against the U.S. (troops in Saudi Arabia and death to extremely high numbers of Iraqi children through sanctions) while completely omitting the third (U.S. support for Israel).
As I said on Thursday, to acknowledge motive is not remotely to imply legitimacy or justification. In fact, the opposite is true: pretending motive doesn't exist legitimizes it more than acknowledging (and refuting) it would, since that fantasyland behavior creates the impression that one is afraid of its being aired and heard. That's certainly the impression that one gets watching John Brennan feed cartoon idiocy to the public in response to Helen Thomas' questions and then having everyone just move on when she tries to get an answer. It's just amazing, given how much endless chatter there is over Terrorism, how rare it is for this question to be raised.
UPDATE: As I did on Thursday, Juan Cole examines all of the evidence regarding what motivated Humam al-Balawi, the Jordanian physician who killed 7 CIA agents in Afghanistan last week, to convert from a CIA asset into an Al Qaeda suicide weapon, and he notes the "way al-Balawi's grievances tie together the Iraq War, the ongoing Gaza atrocity, and the Western military presence in the Pushtun regions." Cole notes that his suicide video specifically decreed the attack to be in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike that killed the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and Cole explains why it's so vital to address these issues forthrightly:
Morally speaking, al-Qaeda is twisted and evil, and has committed mass murder. . . . But from a social science, explanatory point of view, what we have to remember is that there can be a handful of al-Balawis, or there can be thousands or hundreds of thousands. It depends on how many Abu Ghraibs, Fallujahs, Lebanons and Gazas the United States initiates or supports to the hilt. Unjust wars and occupations radicalize people. The American Right wing secretly knows this, but likes the vicious circle it produces. Wars make profits for the military-industrial complex, and the resulting terrorism terrifies the clueless US public and helps hawks win elections, allowing them to pursue further wars. And so it goes, until the Republic is bankrupted and in ruins and its unemployed have to live in tent cities.
At least theoretically, "The American Right wing" is not in charge of any parts of the government, so to the extent these policies continue, they're not a legitimate scapegoat. Whatever else is true, having discussions about how our policies motivate and fuel Terrorism is crucial to having any sort of minimally rational public debate about what we should be doing. But as long as the patronizing, propaganda cartoons that we heard from John Brennan prevail, it's simply impossible for any of these considerations to be examined. That, to me, seems to be the whole point of why those comic book narratives predominate and why the taboo persists: to preclude any awareness of the true costs of our actions and therefore to preclude any meaningful public questioning of them.
83 Comments so far
Show AllHelen Thomas asks an important question. What is the motivation of suicidal terrorists? We are dropping bombs on civilians around the world as well as on the bad guys. Their terror is evil but so is ours. Someone should give Helen Thomas and us a plausible answer.
They do not hate you, they are trying to tell you to quit fucking killing their kin, quit backing the zionazi hooligans of "Israel" and their genocidal policies towards the Palestinians, to show some sense of decency and common courtesy to others. They are trying to tell you that your corporate practices are unwelcome as well.
They are trying to deliver a message to you that have caused them major grievance, are continuing to do so and they wish you to stop.
Boycott the middle eastern country that has the Med Sea to it's west and it's name begins with "I"
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
Of course they won't answer us honestly, we're used to that, but I've seen Helen Thomas patronized before like in this video, and it really pisses me off. Thankfully we have news and reporters such as there are on this web site to help us understand what is really going on in this country.
Most Americans are obsessed with Obama's budget director's recent engagement to some ABC white house correspondent (and associated love child story) and don't give a rip about Helen's questions.
I hope this issue of why the US is the target of terrorists becomes an issue of focus for the media, though it will likely drop off the radar again in a week or two. For too long there has been this oft-repeated and shallow fantasy that "they hate our freedoms" or they are "just evil". Such things are empty-headed fallacies, and hide the nature of repercussions stemming from brutal US imperialism in the Middle East for decades. And all this mostly because of internal energy policy that makes oil (a product subject to highly-centralized control and one that is quickly running out) the lifeblood of the economic engine.
The point is all these discussions accept Al Qaeda as a fact as an organization, and it may well be so now, but it was not so at the time of 9-11 and whatever it was even then, was as a result of CIA and Pakistan SIS doing.
We know that it was and apparently is infiltrated by agents so what part of it is what we are told it is, the bogy man to be feared directing mayhem from the backwoods of Pakistan, and what part is pump primed from Langley or Xe just to keep the good times rolling and the bucks coming from the Hill in Washington.
Hell if a dumb kid with a firecracker strapped to his undies in a made to fail plot on a plane can get this much policy rolling, it is cheaper than paying a lobbyist, by a mile.
So personally, I question who so and so of such and such an affiliate of al Qaeda is getting his orders from. I'm sure as hell not going to believe these half baked stories from the authorities who have been shown to be consummate compromisers of the truth.
Well said, Lucitanian. The hypothesis of a made-to-fail plot with propaganda intentions for the operation may be the "third rail" of public discussions of this and other failed plots. (Think New Jersey or Miami for example.) That kind of expression will get you labelled by Alexander Cockburn and other liberals as a "Truther," or what they used to like to call "conspiracy nuts" (I used to be one of those odious things on the JFK assassination.) Imagine the nerve of an upstart Lucitanian Truther, actually suggesting that a failed bomb plotter is just a cheaper way to lobby for more military operations and expenditures. Are you actually suggesting that our MIC folks are cheapstakes??
No, wait, I’m not a delusional conspiracy theorist, I remember what reality is. I was told it by a Bush era anonymous senior advisor. They don’t lie, do they. And the new administration are straight shooters too. Just listen to John Brennan it never changes. I remember the Bush advisor said in 2003 to the NY Times reporter...
First, the top Bush insider mocked the journalist and all those "in what we call the reality-based community," i.e., people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."
Suskind's attempt to defend the principles of reason and enlightenment cut no ice with the Bush-man. "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality," he said. "And while you're studying that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
What I’m describing is how a few may act to create a convenient reality….
Why?
..."War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.
The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This - although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense - is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is Peace." -1984
Why?
..."What is concerned here is not the morale of the masses, whose attitude is unimportant as long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the elite itself. Even the humblest bureaucrat is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he or she should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph.
In other words it is necessary that he or she should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist -- and so we have been confronted with the war on poverty, the war on crime, the war against drugs, the war against international terrorism, etc. etc." -1984
No way on earth that complete citation was from "1984."
Unless you mean the year, rather than Orwell's book.
And even at that, no way.
The line "...and so we have been confronted with the war on poverty, the war on crime, the war against drugs, the war against international terrorism, etc. etc." is from http://www.notbored.org/goldstein.html
Ghandighost wrote: "...but it is also necessary that he or she should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph."
Have you seen Glenn Beck lately? ;) (And, if you haven't, I understand.)
Greenwald has it right, and his article over at Salon is complete truth to power.
Boy, that Brennan dude really looks like a creep. Or a brainwashed automaton, at the very least.
In a time when we are engaged in massive international aggression and propping up the very wealthiest sectors of the US while neglecting the rest, the job of White House Press Secretary requires a person of good grooming who can nimbly sidestep disturbing substance and deliver superficial talking points camoflaged within a collection of distracting and irrelevant technical details.
Each of the Press Secretaries have been like this for quite a while.
Joe
The answer is "Helen,the main reason they(the Muslim world) hates us is our blind support for genocidal acts of the Government of Israel. We talk about peace but's that just a dance while we sell millions and millions of dollars of military hard ware and technology to Israel. War also serves our purpose of emptying the national treasury into the pockets of each parties campaign contributors. Peace means no profit for most of Washington and it's corporate Johns. It is the biggest business this nation has. We manufacture chaos and create/sustain instability to control our empire and to start the incredibly profitable military hardware cycle. We cannot not stop this cycle until someone stops us by force or we bankrupt this country. Then we will create civil war and war on our own citizens with private Armies hired by the ruling elite to protect from "pre-terrorists" and "traitors of the homeland" At that point the Republic will be destroyed. But we, the ruling elite would have left the states years before with our families, while our non-taxed illegal millions wait for us in Swiss banks accounts. Was there a follow up Helen?"
Helen: Yes. So that survey of attitudes toward us among Muslim nations taken before the second Iraq War that showed that large majorities admired our freedom and wanted to send their children to be educated here was buncombe?"
Brennan: That's right, Helen. Next question?
Sioux
MA77: While Israel's policies are atrocious, vile, and self-defeating using it as the main reason why the U.S. gets attacked is a form of convenient scape-goating. The U.S. in its foreign policy has a LOT to answer for, like the 500,000 killed by the embargo against Iraq; you know, the one Madeleine Albright argued was "worth it." Or how about the estimated one million plus killed in the more recent Iraqi debacle/invasion, added to the four million made homeless? How about the DU leading to birth defects in the babies born to survivors there? How about the pilot-less drones deciding which terrorist cum wedding party to bomb in Afghanistan? And the list goes on and on. America is the LEAD purveyor of violence and #1 arms merchant in the world. Israel is by any standards, a younger sibling following the same deadly and diabolical pattern. It is VERY disingenuous to use one as an excuse for the other. Both will have much to answer for.
MA77
Siouxrose: Could not agree with you more. I'm sorry my comment gave that impression. It was not my intent to imply that. U.S. foreign policy even if you put aside the atrocious Israeli support is enough on it's own horrors to create the "Blow Back" that has come to our door step.
Interestingly, if you consider the economic terrorism that this government has waged on the lives of it's own citizens and the returning soldiers it begs the question when we might see domestically created Blow Back occur within ours borders directed at the Corporate forces that occupies our Government.
I think the Buddhist saying "the way you do one thing is the way you do everything" might help us define the plague that calls itself our government.
Sioux Rose
MA77: Thank you for taking the time to elaborate, and then some. Yes, I totally subscribe to the Buddhist premise, and I think it's becoming clear that one form of the inevitable blowback is taking shape in the form of American citizens being viewed as enemy combatants, the land of the "free" a veritable "occupied" state. Many forces have congealed to produce a government so lacking in representation of the PEOPLE'S interests, whilst owning the media instrumentation to further the farce, that it is time-consuming to label them all. I study the larger cycles of time and the thematic structures associated with each, to gain a fuller understanding of the likely playout of upcoming events. I agree with Martin Luther King, who I view as a spiritual Master, in his explaining that the arc of justice eventually wins out over apparent evil. And there is so much evil in our midsts! Obama's gaining the Nobel prize was just diabolical! Bankers being given the fiscal keys to the kingdom when so many are going without food, employment or shelter, another evident evil. We've volleyed these "developments" around often enough in this forum. Taken in sum they speak of a total breakdown of our society. The end of a way of life is like a giant tree falling down. Following the analogy, out of its trunk spring forth myriad new life forms. I believe that metaphor holds for the collapse of our U.S state-sponsored-terrorism empire. I look forward to what will spring from its fall.
brennan was so sicking that i could not even listen.
fascism unlimited. i was traveling recently and talked
to alot of people while doing so. guess what it seems
that alot less of us are drinking the kool aid anymore!
people are seeing thru this crap now. and i made a point to
talk people that look like suckers for that fox bs.
when the 2010 elections take place there's going some
really surprised ex seat holders. amen!
If the terrorists were Swedish Lutherans ask yourself this, would we have invaded Sweden and right now would we be bombing Swedes?
Depends ... would a large oil field also be discovered in Scandinavia in your hypothetical?
This a bad analogy. The proper analogy would be one of the Swedish Lutherans committing their acts of terrorism after decades of US occupation of portions of Sweden including the US murder of thousands of Swedes.
Dont forget that a good size chunk of the American populace is too dumbed-down and immature to handle the full truth about what is going on in the world and why.
I wonder how many can see Avatar, not as a film about the future, but as a parable of the present.
Why is it, then, that the segment of the population currently organizing and fighting hard for its beliefs is the dumbed-down, immature segment? Sure, they're willing tools of corporate crypto-fascists, just like the original Brown Shirts, but why is it that they're so willing to do what they're told?
Why is it that those of us who understand what's going on, and why, are not organizing at all? Why is it that all we do is go to lectures by famous speakers when they come by our local college, or blog, or subscribe to email alerts, or go to Michael Moore movies, or whatever nonsense it is we entertain ourselves with from our chairs? What do you think is going to happen at this rate?
To me, lack of leadership is the problem. Leadership has to appeal to a broad base and be respected. Leadership has to demonstrate integrity. The joke is that Obama was seen as that leader.
I also believe that the "corporate crypto-fascists" have seen to it that real leadership gets, at best, discredited; at worst, killed.
As Kurt Vonnegut recommended in a late life comment: For futute survival, "Join a gang".
"Helen, where have you been the last decade? Were you in a geritol induced stupor on 9/11/01 when Muslim extreamists killed over 3,000 of our countrymen? Who knows what motivates these idiots to kill innocient people, but likely it's a multigenerational mixture of jealousy and induced hate for the American way of life. If you had been raised in a mudhole, Helen, and taught every day of your life that Americans are evil incarnate ~ wouldn't you be driven to kill them too? If your family, your political leaders, and your religious leaders incessantly told you over and over again that America was the source of all of your people's problems and that you should overlook the food, the medicines, the supplies, and the humanitarian assistance that pours into your village from Americans ~ and hate them enough to kill them whereever and whenever you can. Maybe that is why they want to kill, Helen."
pdf you have no sense of history and seem generally oblivious to US foreign policy in the Mideast over the last 50 to 60 years. Here is a place to start:
http://www.proxsa.org/resources/9-11/Shalom-0109xx-hateUs.htm
I assumed pdf was doing a parody of the man in the video, but maybe I'm wrong!
The officials at the press conference certainly would like us to believe that those involved in attempted attacks were merely unsophisticated dupes, but what is most disturbing is that the many of the recent attacks have been carried out by highly educated people. If the officials acknowledged this, it would really beg the question of why we are spending billions fighting illiterate peasants.
These are not effective responses. Didn't anyone teach you "identify, don't convince?" PDF isn't going to agree with your point of view just because you sent him a link. It wouldn't help even if he read "People's History" cover to cover. By choosing not to ignore him, you wasted the exact amount of time you could have used to contact a few people in your area who would meet with you Tuesday night at 7:30 in your local public library community room to strategize the development of a local peace movement chapter.
Why do so many people here prefer to feed internet trolls rather than organize? What do you expect to happen if we don't organize?
I wouldn't mind if some of you take the advice in my first paragraph rather than spend another moment responding to me. Or if you have to respond, at least start by telling me you just got three people on the phone and you're getting together this week. I have this moment to type only because earlier today my local group completed plans for a gathering of as many as fifty people tomorrow afternoon. Outdoors, in the freezing cold. Seriously. And after that the core group will go off somewhere indoors to deconstruct the gathering and plan next steps. You could be doing this, too. You must.
Thanks,
Steve
Hi Steve. I didn't intend to feed the troll. I try to avoid that.
I've been thinking for a number of years that we might have actually met in the real world outside of the Common Dreams message board. Did you happen to speak at a forum about the Patriot Act at a small upstate New York liberal arts college in spring 2004? If so, I was one of the student organizers of the event. I was involved with some of the Citizens Alternative Voice people up there and it's probably how I first found Common Dreams to begin with.
I've become really discouraged about the state of progressive organizing since graduating. Like right now, taking your suggestion, I tried to find some kind of event to attend this month. There is nothing in my state or the surrounding states on the Code Pink message board. I can find a handful of widely spaced out weekly vigils through UFPJ. The local peace group I signed up with is painting murals and holding fundraisers all the time, but doesn't seem to do much actual organizing. I get a lot of emails about events in DC from various groups but what about out here in the rest of the country? The most enthusiastic organizing I've seen in my community was the Obama campaign. Anyone know a group in Michigan that is actually active?
There were a few appearances that could fit your description, but from the date I'm guessing Hartwick. Yes? My hat's off to you on your excellent memory. For my part, I remember the fruit and generally remarkable hospitality, as well as good company at the dais.
Meeting in the real world is what it's all about. I'm sure by now you've noticed that for the most part it's all I talk about here in "virtual" world. If the "email action alert" were an effective tool, we'd have noticed it by now. It could be an effective tool if we were organized in the real world, but we're not. That has to change.
You can contact me off this board. It's hard to respond effectively with all the clutter and the rapidity with which the addition of new stories pushes recent articles into the archive pages. www dot commonplans dot blogspot dot com has my email address in a little salmon-colored box in the upper right hand corner.
Hi Steve,
Yes, that certainly is the event I'm talking about. I'll check out your website!
You have not demonstrated cause and effect.
What Helen Thomas is aking is what motivates terrorists. With this I believe she is attacking the new definition of terrorism and terrorists.
Where is the list of demands?
Without a political demand these terrorists are not terrorists, they are vengeful criminals.
Of course the other type of "terrorists" are internal dissenters and activists.
I'm surprised nobody has pointed out that you are a very ignorant person. You need to read more and use some intelligence, or maybe try to be more intelligent. I don't know how you can change into a more intelligent person but it is possible. You're tendency to insult people is but a substitute for coherent thinking. You seem to be totally unaware of the history of your country and the enormous crimes it has perpetrated. Your ignorance is criminal. It is possible you will die ignorant, but you still have a chance.
Are you talking to me?
And what country is my country then?
Regardless, the history of the USA, I'm assuming you think I'm American, is not what I'm writing about.
I wrote about the redefinition of terrorism.
Note the italics.
Personally I prefer non fiction, but this was easy to spot.
RE: "pretending motive doesn't exist legitimizes it more than acknowledging (and refuting) it would" - Greenwald
MY COMMENT: Nailed it! I suspect they lack confidence in their ability to refute the motives and consequently are reluctant to acknowledge them.
Americans will never have a decent society as long as they are unable to understand the nature of the society they now have. Unless Americans see themselves as the criminals that they in fact are as a nation, they will not stop being criminal. Criminals have justifications for what they do, and they will not stop being criminal until they realize that their justification is not valid. Sad to say, a common criminal has more justification for his crime than Americans will ever have for theirs because they can't claim to have been victimized or suffered from injustice as a people.
The United States has been economically and politically occupied since World War 2. So much weaponry was supplied, and through so many contractors and subcontractors, that traditional demobilization so soon after the long years of the Great Depression was unthinkable, and not just to the owners of weapons factories. There was a natural bogeyman named Stalin (please, nobody pretend a defense of that guy, OK?) and the arrival of the nuclear age, so the perfect storm in which the American people would invite their own occupation (just as we invited today's surveillance state after 9-11) was under way.
The big-winning WW 2 contractors got very busy opening and buying military manufacturing facilities in all 435 congressional districts. From that moment, the rest of the economy and the entire political system became their hostages and handmaids. When the threat of the Soviet Union was taken away (by The Taliban and Osama Bin Laden, in the "those who don't learn from history" department), the first public relations problem in the MIC's history arrived. Some of you may recall that the initial refusal to give us our "peace dividend" was pinned on the "narcoterrorism" (remember Bush I holding up that big bag of crack on TV?) as nothing else was handy, and it really wasn't gaining traction at all. The MIC then constituted itself a new think tank (PNAC) specifically tasked to identify scarier things that, unlike drugs, were too far from home for ordinary Americans to have their own observations they could use to form their own opinions.
Rather than settling on one thing and risk having it fail to materialize, they picked three -- Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, and gave them a really scary name to make is sound huge and unified like a World War 2-type threat, actually recycling the same name -- Axis (plus "of evil," since there was no unifying ideology like fascism or communism to tie them together). They did a reasonable job of researching possible trouble spots that Americans were predisposed to fear, and threw three nets to increase the likelihood that at least one found game. Luckily, just as justification for high taxes and massive overseas deployment was running out of popular support, they hit the lottery on September 11th, 2001. The rest, as they say, is contemporary history.
Sure, the question of "why do they attack us" is off-limits, but so are a lot of other pertinent questions, like "why are we spending more money on the military than the whole rest of the world combined, including nuclear-armed nations far more populous than ours that truly fear actual foreign invasions, like India and Pakistan," or "if this is a democracy and the two parties supposedly hate each other over ideological differences, then how come the basic structure and expenditures of government, as well as the daily lives of our citizens remain essentially unchanged no matter which holds a majority in Washington or the 50 governor's mansions?"
For 60 years we have been governed by a Vichy government appointed by and under the command of the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower told us in January 1961 that the occupation was nearly in full control (please don't tell me what a right-wing warmonger he was, because on the day he left office he delivered the populace some very important information that no government official before or since has aired, let alone explored, so it's an anomaly well worth noting) and warned us of what we as a people need to do, quickly, in order to govern, rather than be governed by the MIC -- he entered that term into the American lexicon on that night. If he'd done it before leaving office, he'd have been shot.
We never did it. Before deciding it's too late (even if it is), we ought to give Eisenhower's advice a real shot. Form a citizen-activist peace group in your locale. For further details, please see www dot eisenhowerproject dot org, and www dot commonplans dot blogspot dot com.
The other posters have covered the salient parts of the government bullshit so I wish to point something else out:
The following logic train is incomplete and partially deceptive:
"Wars make profits for the military-industrial complex, and the resulting terrorism terrifies the clueless US public and helps hawks win elections, allowing them to pursue further wars. And so it goes, until the Republic is bankrupted and in ruins and its unemployed have to live in tent cities."
At the "so it goes" point you have a situation where the rich GET RICHER, less nationalistic, feather their nests in other countries or a backwater in our country and prepare to make a quick exit from the national rage. The Republic is bankrupted, the taxes for the common people go berserk, repression accelerates and life grows more intolerable. Life expectancy dramatically goes down for the masses, mobility between social strata stops, cultish, provincial and parochial behavior with its' paranoia and bigotry becomes the rule. Education goes to hell in a handbasket.
And THEN we get to the tent cities. HOWEVER, the rich are all healthy, doing fine, making money, traveling in jets and living high on what is left of the hog.
The elite learned from the French Revolution. They are maneuvering right now to avoid the guillotine while furthering their power and riches. We have to cut them off at the pass. They won't stop what they are doing. We are the losers here, not them.
The argument that the "Republic" will suffer doesn't mean a damned thing to these plutocrats.
How do we do it?
IGNORE ALL TERROR NEWS. When you hear or see a terror news snippet, change the channel, turn off the radio or say the words (if you are in a public place) "That's total bullshit!" and walk away. Be ready to shut anyone up that starts with the fear talk. Do what posters here do. Point out a proper perspective. Ask how many people die from murders in the USA. Are the murderers being "chased" with a trillion dollar pentagon budget? WTF is going on here? Get your head out of your ass! Then walk away.
100% correct.
"As I said on Thursday, to acknowledge motive is not remotely to imply legitimacy or justification."
Well, Glen, It seems that you are refusing to take the analysis to it's full implications too.
There are a number of motives that very well might legitimize and justify their actions. One may very well be left with terrorist actions as the only way to defend one's soil against a vastly better armed occupier. Look at how the US so easily justified the vaporization of tens of thousands of Japanese citizens in far less a desperate a situation - Japan being already defeated - and they never occupied, not intended to occupy any part of the USA!
And, as I wrote recently, in a democracy, a nation's people cannot be entirely absolved of culpability in their government's murderous actions.
It is a case of the 'sins of the fathers' and all that.
Those of us here at home who now find ourselves impotently facing that same vastly superior armed foe are not necessarily guilty of the sins of omission that led to this situation, but we certainly did inherit a debt from our forebears. I don't enjoy anticipating how it will be paid.
"They hate us because we are evil"
Two Al Qaeda recruits who later walked out of training camp were interviewed. They were asked why they joined Al Qaeda. Guantanamo proved that America was evil, they said. They were next asked why they then left the Al Qaeda training camp. They had become convinced that America was not as totally evil as they had thought.
Goebbels would be proud.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
It's like living in North Korea anymore.
They hate us because our immortal leader says so.
Now all rise and salute the flag, and sing praises to our comrades at arms.