terrorism Posts

To American eyes the news of the escalating war in the Caucasus nation of Georgia almost reads as farce: a breakaway region of a breakaway region, tanks rolling to maintain control of... well, not that much really. We wonder how it could be in either Russia or Georgia's interests to pick a fight over all this? Why does it seem like Russia's de facto leader-for-life Vladimir Putin is still fighting the Cold War? And what must be going through the mind of Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili to be taunting the giant to its north?

But the farce turns to weariness as we realize just how familiar this all is. Tiny ethnic enclaves with centuries of animosities and well rehearsed stories of atrocities committed by the other set fighting by the breakdown of an empire that had uneasily united them in repression. Change a few details and we could be talking recent conflicts in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Rwanda, the Sudan, Palestine/Israel and Iraq. Blood money from the drug trade, from oil billions and human trafficking add fuel to the fire. We've been fighting these same wars since at least 1914. Why haven't we learned how to stop them?

Seriously: otherwise strong economies collapse under the chaos that these territorial wars bring. Most of the wars seem to be fought in marginal areas and all sides would be better off if the politicians stopped worrying about these contested territories and just focused on building a economy attractive to international trade.

Why hasn't the world learned the mechanisms to end these conflicts before they erupt into open warfare? Where is the political will to end this class of war once and for all? Disease and terrorism are the invariable fruits of these conflicts and strike us all across national boundaries. The "international community" needs to be mean more than impressive choreography and a few thousand athletes in Beijing. This week's real gold metal will go to the leaders that can transcend macho posturing and weak-willed apologizing and get those Russian tanks out of Georgia.

The bullets and bombs have finally found their mark. It is no surprise to learn of yet another assasination attempt against Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Details are still sketchy and conflicting but the only thing we really need to know is that this attempt was successful and that Bhutto is dead less than two weeks before Parliamentary elections that might well have brought her into power for the third time.

Pakistan is a country who's top government scientist exported atomic bomb-making across the world for decades. It still hosts Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan's Taliban are still more-or-less headquartered in its Western provinces. The standoff with India has spawned war after war over the decade, now nuclear-enabled should either country get so emboldened. Billions of dollars of United States money has left Washington for Islamabad since 9/11 and a popular politician can't even campaign there without deadly assassination attempts. Pakistan is one of the world's hot spots, a nexus of terrorism, nuclear proliferation, religious extremism. It is a very sad day today indeed.

A new poll out there shows that only 64% of Americans believe that the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. One wonders what the numbers would have been if "people living in the United States" were replaced by "Americans." Even so, 64% approval is pretty low in these fear of terrorism times.

Some random chatter on the blogs: Americablog's New domestic spying poll numbers are very bad for Bush, Ezra Klein's Trust, But Verify & Stephen Kaus at Huffington's Popping the Wrong Question, Instapundit's cryptic I guess Kaus was right and Michelle Malkin's Sorry NYTimes: America is OK with the NSA.

Rove posing as a patriot

There's evidence that one of President Bush's key aids was involved with the leak that revealed a CIA agent's identity. Republican political hack Karl Rove is being named as someone who told Time Magazine that a whistleblower against the Bush's weapons of mass destructions lies was a CIA agent. More background of the story from two years ago, White House treasonable dirty tricks against whistleblower's wife.

The first question: are we surprised? Of course the smear campaign was orchestrated out of the White House. The whole war has everything to do with politics. Facts were inconveniences when it came to building a case against iraq. We now know that the decade of sanctions against Saddam Hussein worked. His military was a shambles and he had no money to engage in researching or building weapons of mass destruction. The war was a political ploy by the White House. It propped up the President and kept terrorism in the spotlight. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the London bombings were carried out by iraqi insurgents, people who might not be terrorists if we hadn't gone and invaded iraq (yes, there were terrorist before but every act of violence inspires acts of counter-violence).

Karl Rove's job has been to get George W. Bush elected and then re-elected. The role of political consultants is supposed to stop there. The job of governance and statemanship should be left to the President himself. This Administration is more overtly political than any in recent history. Why was Karl Rove selling the war against iraq?

I'm away from my usual haunts on work-related duties but the news sites have plenty of articles about the horrible bombings in London; there is no need for yet another list.

It is always tragic to see the cycles of violence, terrorism and state-sponsored war feeding one another to new acts of violence. Our prayers that the new round of heartbreaks in London don't lead into a kind of retaliation that will only harden hearts elsewhere. We need to envision a new world, one based on love and mutual respect. It's impossible to negotiate with the kind of terrorists that would bomb a packed bus but we can be a witness that hate can be confronted with love. We must bandage our wounded, mourn our dead and continue to build a world where the occasions for all war have been transcended.

Two of the blasts that hit London today were near Friends House, the home of Britain Yearly Meeting, which is acting as a relief center. From TimesOnline

Ministers and priests went on to the streets to work alongside the emergency services, helping to comfort traumatised commuters. At Friends House, opposite Euston Station, Quakers set up an emergency unit for the hundreds of people blocked in the middle of the explosions at Kings Cross, Woburn Place and Russell Square.

The Quakers offered free tea, coffee and telephone calls to all the people affected by the blasts as well as emotional support. Many of the hundreds of people stuck in Euston were witness to the explosions, with one young woman describing how she saw the bus explode and thought it was another 9/11.

She has become partially deaf and is resting in the Quaker First Aid room.

The hundreds of people who are in Friends House remain stuck there for the foreseeable future and many are unsure how they will return home tonight.

Friends House also gets a mention in this Guardian piece

Responses from the Quaker Blogosphere:

Rob of Consider the Lillies is okay and is posting reactions. The Contemplative Activist reminds us to live in that virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars'. Peterson Toscano wonders if the bombings really are senseless in light of our cultural attitudes--"You push me; I push you harder; you push me back, and it goes on and on and on." Beppe turns to a recent passage from his scripture study to gage just what Jesus might have done. I will try to continue updating these responses as they come in.

Our prayers are with all those in London today: the dead, the injured, the scared. And with those whose fear turns to anger and will inevitably lead to calls for retribution. Our Friends Peace Testimony helps us keep our groundedness in times of horror and I am grateful to hear that Friends are there, ready to tend to the wounded of body and soul.

Elsewhere

Apparently Wikipedia is now covering news and is one of the better sources of information on the London bombings.

Over at the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh is reporting that forces in the Bush Administration are looking at war with Iran now.

"This is a war against terrorism, and iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone," the former high-level intelligence official told me. "Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."

Preparations include new war plans and fairly open hints by the Vice President that Israel start the Iran War by attacking its weapons productions facilities.

Hersh also reports that the Pentagon is now doing the secret "special ops" operations that used to be performed by the CIA. This isn't just a change in uniform: after the CIA was caught trying to overthrow governments and assasinating world leaders, the agency was put under congressional oversight. The Pentagon doesn't have that oversight. Followup in today's New York Times:

Among the C.I.A.'s concerns, former intelligence officials have said, are that an expanded Pentagon role in intelligence-gathering could, by design or effect, escape the strict Congressional oversight imposed by law on such operations when they are carried out by intelligence agencies.

This isn't a war on terrorism (neither iraq or Iran have conducted terrorist operations against the United States). This is a war against Muslim nations that threaten to have too much power.