Wednesday - September 04, 2002
The End of the Nation State
Terrorism is nothing new. It's been used by the
unpowerful for millenia. The Jews used terrorism against the Romans. The Helots
used it against the Spartans. The Scots used it against the English. The
examples are far too numerous to enumerate. It is still a successful method of
attacking a superior civilization, but it has become even more lethal the past
hundred years, escalating in its potency until people steeped in a dark ages
culture have now used terrorism to attack the most powerful, civilized and
graciously benevolent nation to ever exist. Why has this tactic become so
successful now when it was only ever marginally effective in the
past?
The potency of weapons has been a significant
factor. Bombs are cheap, easy to conceal, and can cause a lot of bloodshed,
noise, and resulting fear. It is the fear that makes terrorism effective, hence
its name, and the ability to strike anywhere at anytime has made it the tactic
of choice. But that is the simple answer. There's a more in-depth reason that it
is successful. So far, the agents of terrorism are not held accountable by the
civilizations that they live in.
For
all the barbarity of war against other nations, there are reasons for it. War
must be terrible, lest we take it too lightly. But it also must be terrible so
that our enemies do not take it lightly. As the cold war claimed almost all
nations on one side or another, there was a sort of discipline among us all to
not provoke the other side, too much was at stake. Occasional hijackings,
bombings, and other assaults were not sponsored by the Soviets or their vassal
states and were thus poorly organized, executed, and rarely made much of an
effect. However, with the disintegration of our enemy's power, other states have
found that we still think in the cold war ways and they have used this to their
advantage.
That is, we don't associate
these attacks on our people as an act of war by a nation state. We naively claim
that "Al Qaeda" is solely to blame. Yet, the truth is that the level of
training, discipline, and funding needed to exist in such a large force is
possible only through the power of a government. The Taliban was one such
government, but those pitifully poor wretches were not capable of such an
attack. This came from a highly developed nation state. Probably Saudi Arabia,
or maybe even the current bugaboo, Iraq.
Since we act as though it is not a
nation state that has committed this attack, they are free to continue
developing the culture of hatred towards us. Our modern sensibilities restrain
us from conducting the only viable response because we try to hard to
disassociate the criminals from their nation. We look at Saudi Arabia and we see
peaceful people who study and worship and conduct commerce with us daily. It is
against our nature to kill these
people.
Yet this is what is needed. The
people of Saudi Arabia must know that if they don't stop the culture of hating
us and aiding and abetting those who attack us, that they will die. It's not
fair. It's patently unjust. But it is the only thing that works. We cannot
convince them to stop supporting our enemies if we do not deliver a consequence
more terrible than our enemies will provide. A people are responsible for their
government, and their culture, and if that government or culture are our
enemies, then it must be
destroyed.
Yet, we won't do it. We will
be mired in this war on terrorism for a long, long time, just as promised, not
because it is necessary, but because a winning strategy is not being taken. We
are absolving our enemies from blame. We divorce the culture and the nation from
the blame for the attack, and thus the attacks will never
end.
This means the end of the nation
state. All crimes are committed by individuals, not by a nation. The nation,
held blameless, will cease to exist as an entity. Non-governmental
orgainizations (funny how that is a United Nations Term) will increase in
influence and power as we helplessly flail to stop them.
Group punishment is a bad thing. It's
very bad, if you're working with people who have something further to
contribute. You don't use group punishment against your children. You don't use
group punishment against your citizens. You don't use group punishment against
civilized people. But terrorism, by definition is uncivilized. You cannot fight
anti-civilization with civilization. Force cannot be overcome with good will.
Wherever terrorism is practiced, the population must be made to suffer terribly.
They must suffer at a scale that makes the terrorist acts pale in comparison.
Most Germans are decent people and were in World War II. But they supported and
allowed their government to remain in power, thus they were punished and they
were the ones who finally were the ones who stopped the war by ending the
fighting. Good Germans died ending that
war.
The nation state as an
organization in civilization has a purpose: That purpose is to limit the use of
force to the nation state. The people in the nation state are held responsible
for that use of force. We have now apparently decided that the nation state is
no longer responsible, and now any one can use force against anyone else and
hide from retribution.
We must return
to holding people responsible for those they live among. Either they stop the
terror and the cultural hatred of us, or we will.
Go Back to the Start, Do Not Collect $200 Send me your two cents
|
