The United States has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law.

Within the walls of this prison, foreign nationals may be held indefinitely, without charges or evidence of wrongdoing, without access to family, friends or legal counsel, and with no opportunity to establish their innocence.

Attorneys representing Britons, Australians, and Kuwaitis earlier this month had one positive piece of news: the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case determining whether or not the US' prisoners have any legal rights. (BBC) Under the Bush Administration's policy, the U.S. can abduct anyone, anywhere, and so long as they do not touch U.S. soil, they have no human or legal rights of any kind.

Under this theory, any American traveling anywhere in the world can be abducted and held forever by agents of any other nation, so long as they don't touch the soil of the home country of their captors.

This is a bad policy. Especially if others do unto us as we do unto them. Yet the Bush Administration is convinced this policy is making the world safer for Americans. Clearly, there are some unique thought processes going on there, which may not apply to earth.

Two little updates on the protests in London:

-Here are more BBC reporters' blog reports on the happenings of the day, including comments on the successful conclusion of the peace march, the protesters' collective success in making Bush hide for his entire visit, and the way that anything on the Bush/Blair agenda has been drowned out by the explosions in Turkey this morning. Unfortunately, one of the reporters may be right in suggesting that nearly anything can be politically justified during times of such duress, including the Bush/Blair agenda.

-My personal favorite update, the story of the Bush effigy being toppled in parody of the fall of Baghdad (SF Gate). This article has some serious discussion and a counterpoint to the suggestions of the BBC reporter in the previous item.

"There have been more and more bombings since the action in Iraq and more terrorism," said Mischa Gorris, a 37-year-old London lawyer. "You will never change the hearts and minds of terrorists by bombing them. This is what you will get."

I don't think Bush or Blair really care about the underlying causes of terrorism, though, so I don't think they can understand this line of reasoning. They are all about (mis)treating the symptoms. Unfortunately for all of us who wish to live in peace, it's darned unlikely that such an approach will ever cure 'the disease' for which terrorism is just one outward sign.

(Yes, Virginia, there are reasons that the wealthy and comfortable never seem to become terrorists, while the dispossessed and abused sometimes do...)

*

Speaking of the dispossessed: protests against the proposed Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA) in Miami are resulting in some scary, police-state style images. (Many more at ftaaimc.org)

There is a good collection of blog-style reports from BBC reporters as to the early events surrounding Bush's visit to London, including Bush's meeting with the queen and the modest early protests (BBC). They give a sense that this is a very sterile, strange way to have pomp and circumstance. Example:

The focus of the ceremony was inside the gates of the Palace so the great British public never felt invited and, with the exception of a hundred or so hardy souls, they didn't show up. A few people jogging in the park across the road or hurrying to work paused for a moment but most just rushed on by.

This was a glittering spectacle without an audience. It was a film-set, not a theatre.

There was an alternative ceremony performed by protesters and their own versions of the Queen and Bush. (BBC - photos) Highlight from the captions:

At Trafalgar Square, the alternative president said how delighted he was to be in the UK: "Your little country makes a great runway - I'm just looking forward to two days of protests against myself and my policies. Yee ha!"

Meanwhile, the BBC has an amusing fixation with Bush's armored car.

In a video report on the protests (BBC), a reporter notes that images of people screaming and being pulled away by police are not the sort of image that Bush wants the folks back home to see. But really, there isn't much risk of that: the corporate media in our country pretends that things that don't suit its interests don't exist. So few will know.

I enjoy this article about the British press' commentary on Bush's visit to London for its great quotes. (Washington Post) There aren't many U.S. publications that are this direct:

Bush is "about the least welcome visitor to these shores since Mr. Bubonic Plague jumped ship with his rat-pack back in the 1350s," writes the Mirror columnist Brian Reade.

I also enjoyed the perspective about those on the right and left who want to flee Iraq as-is, leaving the country in a disarray that may be worse than the nasty former-ally-now-badguy regime that was displaced. At the same time, it's not exactly a list of suggestions as to how to make things go more smoothly, and so still leaves much to be desired. But I like the recognition of the obligation to set things to rights, even if the means by which that can be done seems to have already slipped from the grasp of U.S. forces (assuming purely for the sake of argument that it could ever have been in the grasp of an invading force...).

For those of you who haven't worried about the plight of the recently 'liberated' people of Afghanistan, please do.

I never imagined that I would live in a time where the President of the United States was reviled around the world.

I'm not saying that inspiring millions of people on earth to unify to protest your war plans simultaneously isn't an impressive achievement. It's just that it's not an intentional, positive achievement.

The least popular president is visiting London right now, and one of the odd aspects of the visit is that Bush has to stay more or less in hiding because of the unpopularity of the Iraq war. (Ironically, Bush's people have pointed to polls, yes polls, showing some support for his visit. Selective about what they read, don't you think?) Here are a few choice snippets:

London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who on Monday called Bush "the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen," urged anti-Bush demonstrators to remain peaceful.

"You are protesting against an illegal war and occupation, and the world will be watching you," he said.

(Washington Post)

The official embrace of the American president belies deep suspicions among ordinary Britons about the war in Iraq, and hostility toward Bush.

Some 1 million Britons protested in a single day in February, before the war. Fifty-two Britons have died in Iraq.

Demonstrators plan to pull down a statue of Bush made of papier mache and chicken wire, to parody the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad.

... Bush will not address Parliament during his visit. Such a speech could invite the kind of heckling the president received when he spoke to the Australian Parliament last month.

(Also Washington Post) Here's another one about security concerns and the disruption his visit is causing:

He denied reports that police were considering shutting mobile phone masts during protests against the president's visit....

During his visit, Mr Bush will also be protected by hundreds of armed guards from the US....They will not be granted diplomatic immunity, and will be subject to the British legal system if they shoot anybody, the Home Office has promised.

...London Mayor Ken Livingstone is holding a peace party in City Hall on Wednesday, attended by many groups opposed to the war in Iraq.

(BBC). Yes, the violent Americans and their violent President is coming, surrounded by violent men! Another comment from a UK elected official:

Glenda Jackson MP, who opposed the war, told BBC One's Politics Show the visit was the "Dumb and Dumber show".

While she said Britain was "America's closest ally for a variety of reasons," she did not agree that the government "should demonstrate that closeness by - as it seems to me - we are at the moment being permanently on our knees."

Here are some comments compiled by the BBC from international sources:

Blair can live with the mockery of newspapers writing that Bush is coming to "check up on his poodle"... What is worse is how Bush's visit is limiting Blair's domestic room for manoeuvre. When parliament votes on his health reforms, many Labour MPs will be voting so enthusiastically against because they think he is already mortally wounded.

Handelsblatt - Germany

---

This week's agenda is likely to be overshadowed by concerns of the rich and powerful... Blair must ask Bush to use his clout for good of the poor and the weak [and] urge Bush to help restart the WTO talks which collapsed in Cancun... The success of the talks is key to addressing some of the reasons for global terrorism.

Sowetan - South Africa

(BBC again) Unlike in American papers, other countries (even South Africa!) are able to have discussions of the root causes of terrorism. Unlike us. Because our President tells us that terrorism, which has been around for years, is suddenly caused only by people who 'hate freedom.'

They used me as a way to symbolise all this stuff. It's wrong." -- Jessica Lynch, on the Pentagon's misinformation about her rescue (BBC)

*

It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. They did not know whether I did that or not. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell that story. So I would have been the only one able to say, 'Yeah, I went down shooting.' But I didn't. I did not....
--Jessica Lynch on ABC

*

Iraqometer's first graphic, the one listing the number of days since a member of the coalition forces was killed, doesn't have to be updated often. The answer is invariably zero.

"The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War". (truthout.org) 17 soldiers died today in a two-helicopter collision (washington post).

Mounting casualties in Iraq have prompted the Bush administration to speed up plans to turn over authority to Iraqi leaders and technically end the occupation by next summer. However, there are no proposals for U.S. troops to abandon Iraq, even when an Iraqi government is in place.

William Rivers Pitt compares the attacks at the beginning of Ramadan to the Tet Offensive of Vietnam. (truthout.org)

*

Just after the invasion, 43 per cent saw the U.S.-led Allies as 'liberating forces.' A poll earlier this month showed that 15 per cent now see the Americans as liberators. Iraqis who see them as occupiers have risen from 46 per cent to 67 per cent.
--Cockburn in The Independent

*

The war is making life difficult within the U.S. Iraq war spending is increasing the largest federal budget deficit in U.S. history. (BBC) Corruption appears rife: the Center for Public Integrity reports that

More than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years... [which had] donated more money to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush - a little over $500,000 - than to any other politician over the last dozen years... Nearly 60 percent of the companies had employees or board members who either served in or had close ties to the executive branch for Republican and Democratic administrations, for members of Congress of both parties, or at the highest levels of the military.

We are losing the very civil liberties that our leaders are sworn to defend.

President Bush is claiming the unilateral right to do that to any American citizen he believes is an "enemy combatant." Those are the magic words. If the President alone decides that those two words accurately describe someone, then that person can be immediately locked up and held incommunicado for as long as the President wants, with no court having the right to determine whether the facts actually justify his imprisonment.

Now if the President makes a mistake, or is given faulty information by somebody working for him, and locks up the wrong person, then it’s almost impossible for that person to prove his innocence - because he can’t talk to a lawyer or his family or anyone else and he doesn’t even have the right to know what specific crime he is accused of committing. So a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as "inalienable" can now be instantly stripped from any American by the President with no meaningful review by any other branch of government.
--Al Gore speaking on Freedom and Security (moveon.org)

Abroad, Bush is so unpopular, that his security people want to shut down central London so Bush can avoid protesters. (BBC video)

This is an interesting time historically, but not a very happy one.

The occupation of Iraq keeps taking such dramatic turns for the worse, it’s hard to even think about without wanting to cry. As of late October, more troops have died during the occupation than during major combat -- it’s only gotten worse since. (washingtonpost.com)

The people of Iraq are falling into a deep despair, fearing they have no future. (Washingtonpost.com)

Attacks on U.S. forces escalated, culminating in large-target attacks such as downing a Chinook helicopter, killing 16 soldiers and injuring 20 more. (sfgate.com) A black hawk helicopter went down next, and attacks on the US are occurring all over Iraq. (BBC) ”In October, 33 U.S. soldiers were killed in hostile fire, double the number killed in September.” (truthout.org)

85,000 additional troops are being called up to staff the occupation, without any overt changes in the failed logic of the plan. (sfgate.com)

Meanwhile, on the home front, our democracy is crumbling under the weight of the war. The US is abducting suspected terror suspects and taking them to allies who torture them for information (Washingtonpost.com), such as the Canadian whose abduction so upset Canada that our neighbor to the north issued a travel advisory AGAINST VISITING THE U.S. at that time. This may be part of a plan for the U.S. to use torture more often. (the Nation)

It is being widely reported that Iraq tried to make numerous attempts to prevent war by offering various deals to intermediaries to the US Government, which were rebuffed. (Washingtonpost.com) As the New York Times observes, “Administration supporters were fond of saying at the time that there were things Bush officials knew but could not share with the public. Little did we imagine that among those things was an offer that might have provided a way to avoid the war.” (truthout.org)

Long serving, loyal military officers are being persecuted for airing “liberal views”. (theitem.com) Some of our own

Administration’s officials, meanwhile, are denying that they ever claimed the Iraqis would welcome us, even though their earlier comments were transcribed (starbanner.com).

Truth is just one of many casualties of this war. If this is the cost, then we must ask ourselves if it is the terrorists, or merely the opportunists in our own government, who have already won.

Things in Iraq are getting so bad that I need a break from summarizing them.

"There is a fatal flaw in attempting to meet the amorphous terrorist threat – either locally or globally – by reaching for a bigger gun."

That's from the Sydney Morning Herald care of this Washington Post World Views column, a valuable source of the wide range of international opinion. (Even though, in the fictional universe of our current 'leadership,' world opinion only matters when in results in others doing our bidding.) There are calls to stay the course, and laments that Wolfowitz wasn't harmed during Monday's attacks; concerns for the Iraqis, and concerns about the U.S. becoming a predatory nation.

Politics infuse everything. Consider this from today's Media Notes column in the Washington Post by Howard Kurtz.

"The concern in GOP circles is such that one prominent Republican strategist said many party faithful hope the administration can provide an 'achievable' deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops by next summer. But that ' "decision-can" keeps getting kicked down the street,' the GOP strategist said."

The summer of 2004? How conveeenient.

The article goes on to quote critics of the peace movement, suggesting that there are only two options: US military occupation of Iraq, or a complete abandonment of the Iraqi people to the chaos already consuming them.

I would ask what these folks are smoking, but being an avid non-smoker it would probably annoy me to find out. Oh, they also state that, because the biggest organization behind the protests doesn't believe the UN should inherit the Bush Administration's mess, that means they're anti-UN, proving that the peace movement hates the Iraqis.

Someone has great drugs and isn't sharing with their hallucination of a monolithic, completely unified peace movement that only sees two options. (You're with us or against us, you're good or eeeeeevil, you're for the war on terror or you're a terrorist, etc.) It's amazing what desperate people will do to avoid having a realistic discussions of our option in Iraq, including accelerating the schedule for actual democracy, letting the Iraqi's choose their own contractors, and coordinating aid and development assistance through the UN.

[And the pro-war hysterics then shout: But then we'd have to give up our lucrative contracts!! We CAN NOT do that! It's our way or the highway! And the conversation becomes unrealistically limited again.]

Kurtz isn't the sort of columnist to call people on these issues, but it's amusing to see their quotes and see how misguided (and blinded) they are just the same.

Occupation is War

Yesterday I attended the peace rally in opposition to the US occupation of Iraq here in San Francisco yesterday. Under a cloudless sky and relentless 80 degree sunshine, thousands gathered to voice opposition to the immoral and unsuccessful policy of occupying Iraq.

As usual, the homemade signs were the best. ("All these signs & Bush can't read!" My favorite I couldn't get a picture of, but seemed to be a speech excerpt from our own administration, 'our mission is to remove a violent and oppressive regime from Iraq...') Several activists in an antique car with silly pro-war slogans and logos representing Bush's period of being AWOL from the Nat'l Guard decorated the car, which was staffed by costumed versions of Bush, Colin, and Dick, all handing out Deception Dollars, a performance which merited considerable attention. (S took a photo of the Powell figure pretending to snort powder off the dashboard through one of these "fraudulent event notes." :-)

During the speeches, the organizers noted that there was an estimated 15-20,000 people participating, and that the media would emphasize that attendance was smaller than during the war, rather than finding it remarkable that people care at all or reporting substantively on our concerns. (Sure enough, today's coverage is completely predictable.) Representatives of military families opposed to the occupation spoke (SF Gate), along with Rep. Cynthia McKinney, mayoral candidates Matt Gonzales and Tom Ammiano, and other local and international luminaries. I found the demonstration to be a positive, creative demand by positive, creative people to reevaluate a failing effort that is costing all of us goodwill and safety.

Discordant notes: police allowing deranged motorists to try to force their way through the march (I have a video of a woman swearing at me after she nearly ran several people down); and a firetruck using the march portion of market street where no traffic accommodations had been made by the police, which was blocked by a rig that had unsuccessfully tried to force its way through. The march route was publicized for weeks in advance, and it appeared that the police were going out of their way to make sure that civilians had to direct traffic. (I guess they're still annoyed over the indignities they suffered on Day X?)

News and Information Resources

• Protester's reports:
  
  
  
  • SF Indymedia Anti-War News, including Nice protest photos by Peter; more photos (best sign: Sammy Hagar imitators against mass homicide)
    
  • DC Indymedia Home, including DC Indymedia's summary the protest (recommended), and A participant's comments on DC Indymedia
    
  
  
• Corporate media reports:
  
  
  
  • Reuters coverage (of the Washington march)
    
  • SJ Mercury coverage
    
  • SF Gate coverage
    
  • Washington Post coverage(Sample:"The demonstrators represented a diverse mix of dissent, from suburban high school students to gray-haired retirees, from fathers pushing their children in strollers to Muslim American college students shouting through bullhorns. There were people from D.C. Poets Against the War, the Louisville Peace Action Community, Northern Virginians for Peace and Central Ohioans for Peace, among many others. Banners in Spanish, Korean, Urdu, Hebrew, Arabic and Tagalog decried the war. Smaller marches began at various locations in the city and led to the main rally, including those organized by Muslim American and by African American activists.")
    
  
  
• Military families' organizations
  
  
  
  • Bring Them Home Now
    
  • Military Families Speak Out
    
  
  
• March Sponsors:
  
  
  
  • Bay Area United Against War
    
  • International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) Coalition
    
  • Not In Our Name (and likely our Not In Our Name Bay Area Chapter); and
    
  • Vanguard Public Foundation
    
  • Endorsed by United for Peace & Justice, Bay Area.
    
  
  

Common Cause has launched an Eye On Iraq campaign to track suspicious spending, among other things. A sample from their e-mail newsletter:

Did you know that the Bush Administration's reconstruction budget for Iraq includes the following requests?
1. Six hundred hand-held radios and satellite phones at an average cost of $6,000 each, BUT enterprising Iraqis have been able to buy satellite phones from Jordan for $900 each.

2. Eighty pick-up trucks at a cost of $33,000, BUT new pickup trucks in the U.S. start at about $14,000.

3. Five thousand computers at a cost of $3,000 each, BUT a computer in the U.S. can be bought for well under $1000.

4. A witness protection program that would cost an average of $200,000 per person, BUT similar programs in the US cost about $10,000 per person.

All this, and some US lawmakers are pointing out possible price gouging by Halliburton. (BBC) You may not be surprised that there are some bills from Bush's no-bid-contract pals that look mighty suspicious. Just because Iraq's ministries pay 98 cents a gallon or less for fuel, doesn't mean Halliburton shouldn't charge the US $1.59 for the same fuel, does it?

The hotel housing US occupation officials was attacked in Baghdad: the attackers escaped, as did Wolfowitz.(SF Gate)

"There is no guarantee we can protect against this kind of thing unless we have soldiers on every block," said Lt. Brian Dowd of Nanuet, N.Y., a 1st Armored Division reconnaissance officer at the scene.

The comment about having soldiers on every block reminds me of an essay in the Nov./Dec. 2003 issue of Adbusters, a fictional representation of what the world will be like in a few years, when the entire middle east is occupied by a corrupt and exploitative U.S. *shudder* The fiction is long, detailed, reminiscent of the British in India, full of disdain for democracy/sovereignity/self-determination, and completely horrific. For those reasons, I recommend reading it.

[The rest of the issue, on the overall theme of "winners" and "losers" is also worth reading. It generally supports my theory that, if you have absolutely nothing to lose, you have no motivation to support anything in world society, and that the disinfranchised are a threat to peace of our own making -- we allow them to be disinfranchised. That's MY take on it -- your mileage may vary.]

Remember that botulism that the US search teams found in Iraq, the one little vial in some guy's fridge at home that was supposed to be PROOF that Iraq had a bio-weapons program? That story has been SO VERY discredited. (LA Times) First, it was sent their legally by an American group. Ooops. And then, there's the fact that it's, well, just botulism.

The vial of botulinum B — about 2 inches high and half an inch wide — was the only suspicious biological material Kay reported finding.... Oct. 3, Bush said the war in Iraq was justified and cited Kay's discovery of the advanced missile programs, clandestine labs and what he called "a live strain of deadly agent botulinum" as proof that Hussein was "a danger to the world."

But Dr. David Franz, a former chief U.N. biological weapons inspector who is considered among America's foremost experts on biowarfare agents, said there was no evidence that Iraq or anyone else has ever succeeded in using botulinum B for biowarfare.

"The Soviets dropped it [as a goal] and so did we, because we couldn't get it working as a weapon," said Franz, who is the former commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Md., the Pentagon's lead laboratory for bioweapons defense research.

The particular bug in the fridge was Botulinum B. The botulism of food poisoning fame. An easily dispersed, can't turn it into weapons unless you're improperly home canning and can force the rest of the world to eat your improperly canned food, non-weapon, biological substance.

The LA Times article is fun, in that the various administration people they speak to are trying to stick to their original story. Unless they fear that the Iraqis were going to visit us and paralyze the nation with Botox injections... Or throw a picnic with their 'special' pickles... Oh, it's just so darned sad.

The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable. It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day. - George Nethercutt, Republican representative, Washington

[I'm suffering back pain that makes sitting upright uncomfortable. I'll post as soon as I feel better...]

How has it come to pass that the Bush Administration believes their main Iraq problem is one of public relations? (Washington Post) It's not the unrest? The violent resistance to occupation? The loss of American and Iraqi lives? Should we believe that those issues are less relevant than Bush's 'message?'

While it's entertaining to hear the President complain that the media isn't cheerleading loudly enough (!!!! where has he been this year, in a cave with Cheney?), it appears that the Administration is a victim of building up high expectations through prior PR efforts. All that talk about all the WMDs we were going to find, and how we were going to catch Saddam Hussein certainly caught the media's attention. It doesn't seem quite right to blame the media for having done such a fine job publicizing the previous ad campaign that it stuck in people's minds.

Especially that Weapons of Mass Destruction part.

Right up until the end, Saddam lied to the Security Council. And let there be no mistake, right up to the end, Saddam Hussein continued to harbor ambitions to threaten the world with weapons of mass destruction and to hide his illegal weapons activity.

-Dr. Condoleezza Rice

Perhaps the flaw in the previous PR campaign was that it had the wrong emphasis. Perhaps, instead of speaking of actual WMDs, they should have spoken of Hussein's nasty ambitions, since that's all they've been able to document.

Pesky details!

Here is a short video (also at Washington Post) discussing the strategic reasons for admitting that a PR campaign is in full swing.

*

Well, there's always all that great rebuilding effort the Bush Admin. can emphasize instead, right? Just as great a success as in Afghanistan's, certainly.

Um, forget I wrote that.

Debate is erupting over the funding for the military and rebuilding efforts. "Of the $4 billion a month already being spent in Iraq, as much as a third is going to the private contractors who have flooded into the country." (Washington Post) This article raises concerns that initially arose when only donors to the Republican Party appeared to be pre-approved for work, and has continued as the number of foreign contractors and consultants exceeded the number of foreign military personnel.

The Iraqi gold rush has raised concerns on Capitol Hill that the administration may be losing control of the taxpayers' money. As the task of rebuilding shifts from government employees to for-profit contractors, members of Congress are worried that their oversight will diminish, cost controls will weaken and decisions about security, training and the shape of the new Iraqi government will be in the hands of people with financial stakes in the outcome. Avant calls it "the commercialization of foreign policy." (from the same Washington Post article)

To address some of these concerns the Senate is attempting to add penalties for profiteering and to require an open bidding system.

*
It's "interesting" that, as the Administration attempts to justify its actions (BBC), that there is chronic insecurity and unemployment, while foreign contractors are snapping up billions of dollars. And some of those contractors are earning hazard bonuses for... protecting Iraqi oil facilities.

Are the locals supposed to take comfort in that? "My daughters can't go to school any more, and women are disappearing off the streets in broad daylight, but at least the oil refinery is being guarded!"

Do you think that the tactics used by Americans in the Revolutionary War for independence from England would be considered terrorism by today's new standards? Hiding in the trees to snipe at soldiers? Not wearing bright uniforms? Not following the rules of war as they existed then, which required open country and lines of soldiers exposing themselves to their opponents in an orderly way?

The US broke a lot of rules to win its freedoms. It was for a good cause, but I still think the US' tactics would be judged in the current political climate.

It's been very sad to read of the violence that has cost so many lives in Israel and Palestine. It's very tragic. It seems very unnecessary, the death, destruction, terror. But it also seems very... desperate, and I'm not quite sure why observations about the desperation involved are not examined so that such sad events can be prevented elsewhere.

It appears from looking around the world that, in places where people have enough to eat, adequate shelter, and can live comfortably on available resources in relative freedom, the citizens tend not to blow themselves up. Where there are opportunities and people have something to live for, people tend to choose to live. Even in places where there are vast disparities between the rich and poor, systems which at least appear to offer opportunities for upward mobility and some earthly comforts tend to keep people invested in their local system of governance, whatever that system may be. When there is an injustice, people generally organize to try to improve the system. [This has been especially apparent in Central and South America lately, where all sorts of groups are attempting to improve the systems which have been disenfranchising them. They have enough hope for improvement that they have not resorted to blowing themselves up.]

Do you see where I'm going with this?

If people suffer constant collective punishment in an externally imposed and arbitrary system, there is no reason to invest in that system or the "order" it brings. [As if government sponsored assassinations and bulldozing homes could ever result in peace or order!] None. Punishing the peaceful or the moderates radicalizes the survivors. Creating an occupation that leaves people hopeless and gives them nothing to live for creates people who are available for suicide attacks.

I'm not condoning the violence of the desperate - I'm just pointing out that hopelessness and desperation can lead to terror. And if we, collectively, want to eliminate terror, we should eliminate the circumstances that give rise to it as best we can. The US itself resorted to violence to free itself from unjust rule, so I don't feel that we are in a position to criticize the quest for anyone's freedom, (though we CAN criticize the methods). The US' culture also had many violent fantasies during the Cold War about how WE would never ever ever tolerate a Communist occupation, with the firm belief that nearly any sacrifice would be worth our particular system of freedom to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Apocalyptic novels of self-sacrifice were hot sellers, despite their formulaic, torrid worldview. If we thought like that... Well, why wouldn't people who actually find themselves occupied think the same way?

Other people in the world are no different from us. It seems that we can use our vast technology and experience to make life more hopeful for people everywhere if we REALLY want to combat terror. If we export hope and improved lives, fewer people will be available to be used as tools of terror. That may not eliminate terror, but reducing it is worth a try.

*

[Ingredients to such an effort: aid where needed; very fair trade that REALLY benefits the poorer nations; information exchanges, including health care worker exchanges; appropriate technology, for those of you who know what that is... These things are done on a small scale currently by NGOs to positive affect with limited NGO resources. If governmental organizations, especially in the industrialized and wealthier parts of the world, made a significant committment for the sake of increased world security, the existing efforts could be analyzed, a series of best practices for each region and culture could be developed, and the best work could be reproduced on a much larger scale for all interested countries. Doesn't that sound better than bombs and military bases? Of course it does.]