my understanding of events has been overly shaped by media coverage, so the following reflections may be terribly superficial. i have been sitting on these comments for some time; so they are stale for that reason too. Gil wrote: > The difference is subtle but important: to a terrorist, acts of terror are > expressive, while to a guerrilla, if they are used, acts of terror are > instrumental. perhaps another way of making same distinction is to remember that ideologically and territorially rooted movements--Chinese, Algerian, Vietnamese, Cuban, Angolan, and Nicaraguan--led protracted "guerrila" armed struggles without carrying out acts such as hijacking (terrorism). Nor did they provide haven to hijackers. There were injunctions against indiscriminate, attention seeking use of terror. And revolutionary "guerrila" violence tended to be sociologically and psychologically selective. It struck at widely perceived symbols of oppression--landlords, rapacious officials, repressive armies. It aimed at widening the revolutionaries' popular support by freeing their potential constituencies from the constraints of oppressive power. Patrick underlines that the civilians on the airplanes and in the wall street towers cannot in any rational sense be seen as symbols of oppression. Gil underlines that these attacks could not have been meant to be "instrumental" in above sense but only "expressive". I AGREE. Yet we are left with how these attacks have been understood in the Arab world. the question is now whether we will allow ourselves to do more than express our most profound condemnation and ask questions other than who did these attacks and how. can we probe into causes without exculpating the terrorists? can we enquire into the (multilayered) meaning of these symbolic attacks not for americans but for the arab and muslim masses in western asia? this may sound heartless because it does take attention away from the grieving and suffering, yet at some point we have to try to understand those against whom bush wants to launch a crusade. Do we have marxist intellectuals who are immersed enough in the cultures to provide real analysis? maxime rodinson and eqbal ahmad have both passed. has fred halliday written anything which could be posted here? Some may point out that the pentagon arms and equips sharon's state, as well as the gulf ruling families, and the world trade centers house the traders in bonds for which the corrupt arab ruling classes seem to have such an insatiable appetite that no offical records are kept of their holdings. Where do the poor arab masses think their wealth of black gold has gone but into the towers of wall street (itself the greatest symbol of usury and perhaps in popular demonology "international judaism")? In fact it may have been the intention of the terrorists to demonstrate to the arab and muslim peoples that if the most important symbols of the US power which backs their otherwise feeble, if not compradorial, ruling regimes can be so spectacularly destroyed, then surely successful domestic civil wars can be won. especially if americans cannot stomach the loss of american lives in the defense of pro washington regimes. That is, the goal of these attacks on the pentagon and the wtc may not have simply been to express vicious hatred of americans but to elicit civil war in western asia. the arab elites know that they must cooperate with the US in the destruction of the islamic fundamentalist threat but if they accede to US demands without winning any concessions vis a vis the rights of palestinians who are now walking on a trail of tears and relaxation of the murderous sanctions on iraq (from which an estimated 5% of the population have died, according to Martin Amiss in the Guardian), the arab and pakistani masses could in fact turn on them. In the latest Nation, Tariq Ali has underlined how grave this threat is in Pakistan. Which kowtowing to the US by these regimes must be exactly what osama bin laden is hoping for so as to elicit this very popular reaction, though he is probably overly confident that he can channel that reaction into his own dark vision for the future--one is reminded of the extreme violence that the ayatollah khomeni had to carry out in order to contain the popular revolt which had outstripped his control. At any rate, this popular reaction will probably engender the fascisization of these regimes. which is something welcomed probably by the cia (note comments on the charlie rose show by milt bearden, ex head of cia operations in pakistan) as well as these regimes themselves. the us which will not put any pressure on the israeli state that "harbors" the war criminal sharon will thus have a more difficult time getting west asian govts to come on board than it did in the coalition against saddam who was indeed rightly viewed by many as a menace. plus, last time cooperation was predicated on the us promise to do something for palestinians. people no longer have the illusion that there will be a payoff from cooperation. Lack of popular support will constrain these regimes in the support which they can provide the US. Of course Musharraf has already implied that the pakistani military has been asked to deliver what it cannot so as to justify a US war on its nuclear capacity--the only islamic bomb. Pentagon-India relations seem to be as good as ever, and there is the threat that India could be used as a staging ground, which could bring the whole region to the brink of unimaginable war. such a catastrophe probably means little in the calculations of bush and co--these lives have very cheap in the west for the last two hundred years or so (see Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts). at any rate, we can be certain that the kind of govt which osama bin laden or or dissident pakistani generals or sudanese generals would like to put in place would be at the very least as oppressive as those now in power (Andrew Kliman's news and letter analysis is excellent on this). So I agree with Patrick that we are most obviously not dealing here with a revolutionary movment...which as Patrick has rightly pointed out is so obvious from the callous disregard of innocent civilian life. i think we should remember that the ratio of human losses inflicted by ilegitimate and state sanctioned terror, when compared with revolutionary terror and non official and nihilistic terror, is probably half a million or so to one. and we need to remember that the visibility, and recognition, no less than the sympathy, accorded to the victims of those who belong to dominant powerful group are also many times greater than that accorded to those from weaker and powerless groups who have suffered in silence. we americans cannot expect others not to be as unbothered as we are by these disproportions. Consider the US bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant which seems to have produced a great percentage of essential drugs. Even if we Americans have convinced ourselves of the benevolence of the US govt--it was an "honest" mistake-- many Sudanese were doubtless not comforted by the US belief in its own good intentions. In fact many must have thought that the US would not have taken the chance of making such a mistake if the US govt did not have a racist disregard for African life in the first place. That the US then stymied the investigation into the consequences of the bombing probably only strengthened this interpretation. Some Sudanese elites (who are themselves of course frighteningly racist, if not genocidal) did vow to take revenge on the US; after all, they were rewarded for having kicked osama bin laden out of the country by being bombed a couple of years later. It is rather interesting that no one is raising the question whether there was some sudanese backing to these terrorist attacks; perhaps someone channelled funds to terrorist networks in Afghanistan. It is best that the US consider this possibility before it engages in indiscriminate bombing in Kabul (i can't see how the us engages in ground war with all those land mines); the US may well only create the next two to three generations of terrorists. flag waving seems so dangerous right now since it seems to be encouraging fealty to the very state whose actions may in fact guarantee more terrorist taking of innocent american lives of which i include mine as one. this fear is manifest in the call by many americans for justice instead of vengeance which will only escalate the conflict. people will continue to wave flags, i think the question in the short term becomes the struggle over what the flag symbolizes--fealty or justice, the civic religion of national unity or the constitution (i note here the loss of immigrant rights and rights of protest). The attorney general John Aschcroft will become the pivotal figure in this struggle over the meaning of the American flag. But we are now asking questions about the culture, symbols and rituals of the working class. this means that we have to complete the marxist analysis of working class culture just as much we have to complete the critique of political economy. at any rate, i don't think it's a done deal that aschcroft will be able to mould the laws as he intended to before this tragedy occurred. i am hoping that once the lapses which allowed these attacks to happen are revealed, it will be possible to argue that security can be had without the infringements for which Aschcroft is fighting. Rakesh
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