The view of an European leftist.
Rational thinking is far away from chickening out
These days, with all war drums beating, the conservatives seem to think
that flag waving alone will win this war. All those "We gonna roll over them" guys
are going to have a difficult time dealing with the bare and naked truth.
(Most of this is a loose translation of an Op-Ed that expressed many of my views and ideas better than myself, written by Manuel Castells, an Spanish sociologist, professor at Berkeley).
I beg your pardon if some sentences are a bit obscure and ortography has suffered, fast writing in english is hard for me.
The barbaric massacre of thousands of people in the United States has weakened the very foundings
of our societies, even putting under scrutiny the basic principles of coexistence y civility.
But 11 September 2001 bears an even more dramatic significance: It has started the first World War of this century.
Which war is this? Against who? How it is going to be fought? To be able to wage this war from our multiple values and interests, we need to understand in what kind of situation we are into.
It isnīt a clash of civilizations, a lie propagated by those who reduce the multiculturality of our species to th simplistic opposition the West vs. "Them"
It isn't a clash of religions, the great majority of muslims and nearly all their governments oppose terrorism and are part of our global economy and international community.
It is neither a clash between the poor and capitalism, even when social exclusion drives to the despair that fuels fanaticism.
The terms of this war must be precisely defined: is the war of the terrorist networks of islamic fundamentalism against the political and economical institutions of the rich and powerful countries
in particular the United States, but also those in western Europe, closely linked in by their economical, political and military ties.
In the roots of this war lies a refusal against the margination of muslims coupled with the affirmation
of the supremacy of the religious principles of Islam as a base for the society (using
interpretations that contradict the higly humanistic teachings of the Qoran)
The humiliated identity and the comptent of the Western powers in their regard of the islamic culture and religion lead to resistence,
and to the calls for Holy War.
This resistence shows itself in the opposition against the existence of Israel and is fed by the israeli arrogance in their oppression of the palestinian people.
The world Bin Laden dreams about already shows itself in the ruthless Taliban rule of Afghanistan.
Those terror network feed themselves of the frustration of factions in many muslim countries, humiliated by what they preceive as neo-colonialism.
But is also possible that terrorist networks from many different origins including sectors
of criminal underground economies such as the albanian mafias that tunnel afghan opium
into Europe (and that spawned the kosovar and macedonian conflicts), are collaborating with the islamic fundamentalist networks.
So we have in front a hard core of terrorist islamic networks, with ties with some governments
, tactical alliances with international terrorist and criminal organizations, and diffuse simpathy among parts of the muslim population.
Their only available weapons from their inferior military and technological stand range from the individual assasination to the mass killing
as a mean to undermine the complex infrastructure supporting our daily life. Their best asset: The transformation of people willing to die in the best intelligent ammunition available.
So we have to wage the hardest war, a war against a global network capable of endless reorganization and regeneration, constantly adding new elements
drawing from the social despair of millions of muslims
Thats why this war will be nothing like the Gulf war, it will be long, cruel and insidious. The enemy is prepared and was looking for it
So, How can we attack this network?
We have to
a) dearticulate the network,
c) avoid it's reproduction
In this second level lies alot of the good hearted dicussion these days, and good hearted people are right: we have to stabilize the world by
developing those who are excluded today, practising cultural tolerance. For a start, Israel must
be forced to accept a Palestinian state and we have to impose peaceful cohabitation upon jews and arabs in the Middle East
It might be difficult, but it must be done if we are serious about closing that source of instability.
But this would probably have to come after the war that we must win:
The first duty is the location and elimination of the strategical nodes of the terrorist network
including Bin Laden, but is naive to think he is our only enemy. Those operations will have to
The weak point of the U.S. is the poor quality of their available information,
which they must now compensate with help mostly from israeli, saudi, palestinian and pakistani intelligence.
The theater will probably comprise Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebannon, Libya, Egypt, Irak and the the rest of the world, as mostly covert operations try to identify and erradicate nodes of the network.
This of course will produce impredictable and frightening developements (just think of a nuclear capable Taliban-like ruling in Pakistan)
In a certain horrible way, they will be easy to locate: where massive destruction events happen.
For our societies to survive during this proccess, we must set the economical, cultural and institutional means to avoid it's reproduction.
Our current political and economical organization helped to bring upon us this
phenomenon we have to fight now. (Islamic zealots seemed a great weapon to throw against the USSR).
In the long term, we need to profoundly modify our world, getting over social exclusion and opression of identities.
In the short term we are at a war that bold words and macho courage won't win.
