Triumphant Terror
The devotion to and worship of power so apparent in decades of building 'overkill' for the American military is a lesson to the terrorists of the need for violence which they learn only too well: John Roberts

Terror is a weapon peculiarly attractive to the powerless since they have almost no other. That often makes its perpetrators both less susceptible to human sympathy for victims and immune to some of the punishments generally meted out to criminal offenders. It is therefore a weapon that civilized societies find particularly difficult to guard against, made moreover more difficult still for those societies by their habit of training their own military to deliver similar terror to presumed or actual adversaries.

Among the oppressed and the downtrodden are where the powerless are most numerous. The urban jungles and the prisons of industrialized states have proved to be excellent training-grounds for the most depraved and violent members of our societies and within them we spawn serial killers and others who prey on the defenceless even if they less readily turn to terrorism. But what we also do in such places is produce resentments against inequality and injustice that are ideal breeding-ground for the young terrorist, who can there imagine himself as a noble fighter against those ills. Every instance of the powerful using terror is an example of its value as a weapon and our police who use illegal force to cow objectors or recalcitrants, our military who uphold national policies against the will of subject or client peoples and the governments who command them; these are the teachers who instruct the young idealists who see no other way to protest the injustice and inequality that afflicts them - and their own kin. This is not a justification, but towards an explanation.

Suicidal terrorists are especially difficult to counter because the response to the use of force often thought to be most intimidating - killing the opponents - is not a very serious deterrent. So when politicians bluster that they will find and destroy terrorism, they are often merely encouraging it. The devotion to and worship of power so apparent in decades of building 'overkill' for the American military is a lesson to the terrorists of the need for violence which they learn only too well.

As a consequence, whatever responses to terrorism are provoked should be kept within the bounds of humanity, reason and law. Any instant retaliation, such as is regularly seen in Israeli replies to Arab suicide attacks, is almost certain to be counter-productive, unlikely to have very useful effects and most likely to stimulate further such attacks. For motivation to induce men (or women) to kill themselves in pursuance of a terrorist objective has to be very powerful; something not likely to be common amongst poor and downtrodden people. It has to be provoked and this is clearly what American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, has been doing.

These reflections arise after hearing and seeing the horrifying news from New York of the destruction of the World Trade Centre. The symbolism of near simultaneous attacks upon American economic, military and political institutions is awe-inspiring, less for its success (although that has been formidable) than for its organization. However the horror afflicts everyone it is vital to try to analyse the events calmly and make a stab at understanding those causes that have contributed to so horrific an outcome. Because this is certainly the harbinger of many others that this century will see.

Some things seem clear. The description of the perpetrators as 'faceless cowards' is in some ways nonsensical. Whatever lunacy or perverted idealism induced a dozen or more hijackers to fly huge jet aircraft to their deaths in the most horrendous crashes into skyscrapers, it could hardly be termed cowardice. Nor does the cry 'we are at war' convince: war implies an enemy of the level of a government and only governments are generally capable of terrorism on such a scale. No candidate appears ready to shoulder the blame or indeed to risk the deed.

But we should beware of exaggerating the present level of disaster. One of the planes could have been crashed upon a nuclear power plant, with much worse consequences. And as long as thirty years ago some of us warned of the feasibility of a terrorist group making a nuclear bomb with stolen plutonium - the Israelis stole a good deal in order to make their first such weapons and the old Soviet stocks have been plundered by thieves. Holed up in a secret location in some city and then issuing an ultimatum to the national government with a series of demands to be met unless a nuclear explosion is to follow, such a group could make the present inferno seem minor.

The loss of civilian lives is terrible: the callousness of destroying thousands of innocent people in a modern city bears irresistible comparisons - unwelcome and likely to be resisted by the unthinking - with the annihilation of the centre of European and Japanese cities during war in the middle of last century. This latest terrorist atrocity was an attack upon the only Superpower in our world. It was also an attack upon global capitalism and in the two cases it was both symbolic and realistic. It was an attack that threatens all other wealthy countries of the world and above all their governments. It was an attack upon the foundations of a modern world which to some is a place of incredible wealth and comfort but to others is still a world of poverty and hunger. If we think that we can fight the 'evil' of terror by using the same injustice that has provoked it we are mistaken. Instead we must pause, reflect and be ready to avoid the knee-jerk reaction that so predictably came from a four-star American general - "Your armed forces are ready".

Source of Article
John Roberts World Newsletter
An archive of John Roberts articles published in Vanguard Online can be found at http://www.vanguardonline.f9.co.uk/jrarchiv.htm