Sunday, April 25, 2004
Cutting off your nose to spite your face
I doubt the failed suicide boat attack was organized by Iraqis. It isn't, however, impossible. Plenty of Iraqis seem to be making common cause with foreign insurgents in their attempts to drive out the American occupiers. What the attack attempted to do was cut off exports of oil, the money for which would come back and help rebuild the country after 11 years of debilitating sanctions. That's the same reason insurgents have blown up the oil line to Turkey several times over the past year. They want to cut off the supply of oil.
It's no fun to be a conquered people. On the other hand, would you, say, burn your own cornfields, blow gas stations and plant bombs in marketplaces in order to make life so chaotic that your occupiers would leave? Assuming you succeed and they do, in fact, depart, what in the heck have you gained? You don't usually burn your own house down to drive off burglars (which makes one think that most of the insurgency is driven by people who couldn't give two flips about Iraq, namely, jihadists from OUTSIDE Iraq).
I think insurgents in Iraq are faced with a rather unusual dilemma. When you were fighting off the Japanese or Germans in WWII, you were beating back a conquering power whose aim was to rape (figuratively and literally) conquered lands. In Iraq, America's express aim is to bring democracy and prosperity (and no, I don't buy the idea that we are gaining oil revenue from Iraq or some such nonsense. Iraq is a HUGE cost both in taxpayer dollars and in terms of human lives). In other words, SUCCESS would imply good things for Iraqis. People whose motivating goal is to defeat America at all costs must actively do things that HARM Iraqis. Therefore, blowing up your own country and denying it the critical revenue generated by oil sales makes sense, if tunnel vision has caused you to ignore the forest for the anti-American tree (let's see how many analogies one can melt together).
On a random tangent, it's pretty clear that the real problem in some of these countries is the sheer amount of firepower in the hands of the general public. Afghanistan and Iraq are both awash in guns, which, obviously, makes both countries very difficult to govern, as any malcontent has large arsenals to draw from.
This would seem to belie NRA claims that more guns equals more safety. As they say, people kill people, not guns. That's true, but it must be admitted that its a heck of a lot easier to kill other people when you have huge piles of guns and/or bomb-making material lying around.
The NRA wouldn't recommend letting normal citizens own nuclear weapons, or scud missiles. If they TRULY bought their own rhetoric, they should be advocating our right to split atoms safely in our basement. They aren't, because they understand that certain technology, in the wrong hands, is SO dangerous that it is just and proper to ban their possession. It's not such a leap, therefore, to say that too many guns make a nation ungovernable (harmful side effects are too severe), and thus restrictions are VALID.
I doubt the failed suicide boat attack was organized by Iraqis. It isn't, however, impossible. Plenty of Iraqis seem to be making common cause with foreign insurgents in their attempts to drive out the American occupiers. What the attack attempted to do was cut off exports of oil, the money for which would come back and help rebuild the country after 11 years of debilitating sanctions. That's the same reason insurgents have blown up the oil line to Turkey several times over the past year. They want to cut off the supply of oil.
It's no fun to be a conquered people. On the other hand, would you, say, burn your own cornfields, blow gas stations and plant bombs in marketplaces in order to make life so chaotic that your occupiers would leave? Assuming you succeed and they do, in fact, depart, what in the heck have you gained? You don't usually burn your own house down to drive off burglars (which makes one think that most of the insurgency is driven by people who couldn't give two flips about Iraq, namely, jihadists from OUTSIDE Iraq).
I think insurgents in Iraq are faced with a rather unusual dilemma. When you were fighting off the Japanese or Germans in WWII, you were beating back a conquering power whose aim was to rape (figuratively and literally) conquered lands. In Iraq, America's express aim is to bring democracy and prosperity (and no, I don't buy the idea that we are gaining oil revenue from Iraq or some such nonsense. Iraq is a HUGE cost both in taxpayer dollars and in terms of human lives). In other words, SUCCESS would imply good things for Iraqis. People whose motivating goal is to defeat America at all costs must actively do things that HARM Iraqis. Therefore, blowing up your own country and denying it the critical revenue generated by oil sales makes sense, if tunnel vision has caused you to ignore the forest for the anti-American tree (let's see how many analogies one can melt together).
On a random tangent, it's pretty clear that the real problem in some of these countries is the sheer amount of firepower in the hands of the general public. Afghanistan and Iraq are both awash in guns, which, obviously, makes both countries very difficult to govern, as any malcontent has large arsenals to draw from.
This would seem to belie NRA claims that more guns equals more safety. As they say, people kill people, not guns. That's true, but it must be admitted that its a heck of a lot easier to kill other people when you have huge piles of guns and/or bomb-making material lying around.
The NRA wouldn't recommend letting normal citizens own nuclear weapons, or scud missiles. If they TRULY bought their own rhetoric, they should be advocating our right to split atoms safely in our basement. They aren't, because they understand that certain technology, in the wrong hands, is SO dangerous that it is just and proper to ban their possession. It's not such a leap, therefore, to say that too many guns make a nation ungovernable (harmful side effects are too severe), and thus restrictions are VALID.
