Iraqi crisis explained...
- Thread starter Jake the Dog
- Start date
Vlad The Impaler
Learning Storage Performance
From the Giver, or Flagreen as he is more commonly known, that is very amusing. So Bill, do you actually have any opinions about Iraq that you would care to post under your name? It is nice and easy to file all of your 'Giver' opinions under the 'highly amusing and oh-so very clever windup' heading, but do you actually have opinions that you are prepared to put foward for yourself?
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
Interestingly tonight I went out to dinner and the count of who was for "give peace a chance" and who was "blow that mofo up no matter what the cost" was about 7 to 1. Everyone was a US citizen except me and a chick who was born in Niguragua. The majority thought Saddam was a bad bastard indeed but that the 100 beelion dollas that the war will cost would be better spent back at home on American women and children who had nowhere to live and no food to eat. I couldn't help but agree.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Last week's issue of time reports a 54%/36%/8% War/Peace/Don't Care profile among Americans.
Of course, I think Time leans just a hair to the right anyway. Compared to Newsweek, our slightly leftist glossy news magazine.
Of course, I think Time leans just a hair to the right anyway. Compared to Newsweek, our slightly leftist glossy news magazine.
You know just lately I have noticed a great deal of people that I suspect are in their early twenties to late twenties having a great deal to say about the defense of their country and eager for a war,I'm not saying it is wrong to want to defend your country,but I was wondering how many of them would be willing to join the military and defended it or is it as usual easy to talk but not willing to do the dirty job.
its.fubar said:
What I should also have said was how many people in the USA are actually willing to join the military and go into harm's way to attack Iraq and possibly die or is it as usual a great deal of talking but very little doing Where it's easier to let somebody else do their dirty work.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Die for George Bush? That's a very funny joke. It must be, because I laughed aloud.
I curse each new day as I awake, and I still wouldn't die for George Bush.
Of course, I obviously hate the Bush family with a passion. Could have something to do with the whole "atheists shouldn't be citizens" comment papa Dumbass made during his first election campaign. Or maybe the fact that no member of the family seems to understand the concept of economic policy (Two Bushes elected to national office, two recessions. Neal Bush was the recipient of one of the larger S&L bailouts. Jeb just hasn't had a chance to screw up yet).
I curse each new day as I awake, and I still wouldn't die for George Bush.
Of course, I obviously hate the Bush family with a passion. Could have something to do with the whole "atheists shouldn't be citizens" comment papa Dumbass made during his first election campaign. Or maybe the fact that no member of the family seems to understand the concept of economic policy (Two Bushes elected to national office, two recessions. Neal Bush was the recipient of one of the larger S&L bailouts. Jeb just hasn't had a chance to screw up yet).
Is the American administration so naive in thinking that the average person cannot see through there Double standard and hypocrisy Such as Donald Rumsfeld Business deals with Saddam Hussein.
http://www.news.telegraph.co.uk/new...irq31.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=67568
http://www.news.telegraph.co.uk/new...irq31.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=67568
fool
Learning Storage Performance
I'll probably regret asking but
its.fubar
Tasmania? What’s going on in Van Diemans land?
(Sorry tea/tannin for probably the spelling and definitely the archaic terminology)
its.fubar
Tasmania? What’s going on in Van Diemans land?
(Sorry tea/tannin for probably the spelling and definitely the archaic terminology)
fool said:
fool
I feel certain that the original people that live in that great land would be more than able to discuss the Ins and outs of their precarious situation and there problem with the great white man and his global economy, but unfortunately the problem is you see they do not have access to technology we have in the west, having said that, I'm not sure they wish to have it, but I am certain you understand the problems they have with out it.the unfortunate situation that arises is that when the past meets the present,and the west say we are doing this for your own good.don't you think there is a parallel to be drawn with the situation in Iraq the only difference is the invasion and war on Tasmania is a part of history now,but there are and is reliable information that their freedom fighters are still fighting to this very day, peacefully for the most but fighting nonetheless,and what does this teach us.......one thing is certain nobody likes the big brother syndrome or indoctrination.
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
Fubar, sorry, but you haven't got the slightest idea of what you are taliking about. Who are these "freedom fighters" you mention?
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
Matter of fact I have, Fubar. Tell me, how many Tasmanian Aboriginies are out there roaming the streets fighting for freedom this year?
Tannin said:
Tannin
You'll be surprised by how many are actually fighting for their freedom,it is extremely difficult estimate just how many but enough to constitute a freedom fighters reunion each year where they all enjoy the festival and the occasion and of course awaiting the release of there so unjustly imprisoned members who were fighting for their just rights.
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
Who knows, Fubar, I might be surprised. Tell me - for this small detail slips my mind at this present moment - just how many Tasmanian Aboriginies are there alltogether? As of, oh, say, the end of the century just finished.
Tannin said:
Tannin :
you of all people must realize how it feels to come out from under a unjust regime after so many years of oppression . it doesn't really matter how many they are, the point is, it is happening, but I feel certain that if you were really interested a little bit of research would give you the answer About the Tasmanian Aborigines .
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
Yes, I am aware of these things, Fubar. But please try to check your facts a little more carefully. Trust me, this really is a question that is absolutely vital to your contention that the Tasmanian Aborigines are oppressed and fighting for their freedom.
How many Tasmanian Aboriginies are there in Australia today? (Feel free to include ones living in other places too if you wish.) A very rough estimate will do.
(I just happen to know the exact number, strangely enough. In fact, I just happen to have full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal population figures in my head for every year since 1876. But I'll be happy to hear your figure for any year you care to choose as the most convenient example. No need to be too precise. Anywhere within ... oh ... shall we say 50% either way? Just let me know if that's too precise for you and we'll agree on a larger range.)
How many Tasmanian Aboriginies are there in Australia today? (Feel free to include ones living in other places too if you wish.) A very rough estimate will do.
(I just happen to know the exact number, strangely enough. In fact, I just happen to have full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal population figures in my head for every year since 1876. But I'll be happy to hear your figure for any year you care to choose as the most convenient example. No need to be too precise. Anywhere within ... oh ... shall we say 50% either way? Just let me know if that's too precise for you and we'll agree on a larger range.)
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
I'm afraid that's going to be a little difficult, Fubar. You see, I've never met a Tasmanian Aborigine. In fact, strangely enough, no-one I know has ever met a full-blood Tasmanian Aborigine.
But then, seeing as the oldest person I know is only 92, and there haven't been any Tasmanian Aboriginies since the last one died in 1876 - that's 35 years before my 92-year old friend was born - perhaps that's not so surprising after all.
The moral of the story, my friend, is always check your facts.
But then, seeing as the oldest person I know is only 92, and there haven't been any Tasmanian Aboriginies since the last one died in 1876 - that's 35 years before my 92-year old friend was born - perhaps that's not so surprising after all.
The moral of the story, my friend, is always check your facts.
Jake the Dog
Storage is cool
who knows Tannin, perhaps they're in cahoots with the Tassie Tigers and there's plenty of them in hiding... :roll:
Cliptin
Wannabe Storage Freak
Tannin said:
It's a resistance movement. They have been resisting turning to dust.
This reminds me of a joke from David Letterman:
"Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2) Advising the President. 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin."
fool
Learning Storage Performance
You mean the referendum on EU membership? (90+% turnout, 53% yes, 45% no.)
The general election planned for April 12?
What has that got to do with Iraq?
The general election planned for April 12?
What has that got to do with Iraq?
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
Tannin said:
Indeed. Now that this fantasy of Aborigine freedoom fighters roaming the streets of sunny Lonnie have been put to rest, it appears the poor chap has ignored the facts and gone drooling at the mouth about Malta of all places.
slo crostic
Learning Storage Performance
That's the funniest string of posts I've read in a long time.
Good one Tannin, keep 'em coming!!!
Good one Tannin, keep 'em coming!!!
A Definite and reliable information is beginning to come out that the aborigine freedom fighters from Tasmania has been seen in Malta and it has been said they are on their way to their friend's and brothers in Iraq so that country will not become a historical "What if" the rest of the world help and prevented them in there hour of need instead of saying , well there goes that real estate back to the Stone age.
its.fubar said:
A Definite and reliable information is beginning to come out that the aborigine freedom fighters from Tasmania has been seen in Malta and it has been said they are on their way to their friend's and brothers in Iraq so that country will not become a historical "What if" the rest of the world help them prevail in there hour of need instead of saying , well there goes that real estate back to the Stone age.
Which scenario you decide on is up to you ?
"help them prevail "
"prevented them"
fool
Learning Storage Performance
its.fubar said:
I always said care in the comunity was a bad idea.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
Most of this was over my head but it was as interesting as it is long.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-031103A
Unless we are prepared to look seriously at the true stakes involved in the Bush administration's coming world-historical gamble, we will grossly distort the significance of what is occurring by trying to make it fit into our own pre-fabricated and often grotesquely obsolete set of concepts. We will be like children trying to understand the world of adults with our own childish ideas, and we will miss the point of everything we see. This means that we must take a hard look at even our most basic vocabulary - and think twice before we rush to apply words like "empire" or "national self-interest" or "multi-lateralism" or "sovereignty" to a world in which they are no longer relevant. The only rule of thumb that can be unfailingly applied to world-historical transformations is this: None of our currently existing ideas and principles, concepts and categories, will fit the new historical state of affairs that will emerge out of the crisis. We can only be certain of our uncertainty.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-031103A
Unless we are prepared to look seriously at the true stakes involved in the Bush administration's coming world-historical gamble, we will grossly distort the significance of what is occurring by trying to make it fit into our own pre-fabricated and often grotesquely obsolete set of concepts. We will be like children trying to understand the world of adults with our own childish ideas, and we will miss the point of everything we see. This means that we must take a hard look at even our most basic vocabulary - and think twice before we rush to apply words like "empire" or "national self-interest" or "multi-lateralism" or "sovereignty" to a world in which they are no longer relevant. The only rule of thumb that can be unfailingly applied to world-historical transformations is this: None of our currently existing ideas and principles, concepts and categories, will fit the new historical state of affairs that will emerge out of the crisis. We can only be certain of our uncertainty.
fool
Learning Storage Performance
Very interesting link Howell, I'm gonna have to think about that one.
James
Storage is cool
You might be interested in a short article my father wrote recently.
At the NPC on Friday, the Prime Minister made a reasoned and eloquent case for his policy of support for US policy on Iraq. He deserves a reasoned response and the public deserves an explanation of why these arguments have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of people and governments around the world.
Mr Howard is right to say that the world would be safer if Saddam Hussein were deprived of the weapons denied to him by the 1991cease-fire agreement and UN Security Council Resolutions. Also that it would be good for world order if Security Council resolution 1441 were implemented and that the Iraqi people would be much better off without this monstrous dictator. But there are three deep problems with the US policy that our PM supports: proportionality, selectivity and its consequences for world order.
In assessing responses to any problem the questions have to be weighed: do the ends justify the means and are the likely costs proportionate to the likely benefits?
In this case, the overwhelming judgement of the planet is a clear ‘No’. Iraq’s neighbours, those most threatened by his weapons and ambitions, (with the special-case exception of Kuwait) see a US invasion of Iraq as far more dangerous to them. Throughout the world, not only Muslims but much of the wider population fear that the Iraqi people will suffer disproportionately. Governments everywhere worry about the likely impact on the world economy of a temporary rise in oil prices and a blow-out of the US budget. In fact such knock-on economic effects of war in Iraq are likely to cause more deaths, word-wide, than did the September 11 terrorist attacks, through the trickle down effect onto the economically most vulnerable individuals. Beyond that, proceeding on the present US course has already gravely split and weakened NATO, the UN and the European Union – the three most constructive human endeavours of the past half century. The excitement of Muslim hostility towards the West is also a major issue, both in terms of its assistance to terrorism and its negative effects on political processes in Muslim countries. For these and other reasons, the world overwhelmingly feels that the proposed ‘cure’ is worse that the status quo. It is also relevant that the lesson of recent history is that dictatorships fall without outside intervention or massive bloodshed and destruction: this has happened dozens of times in the past 40 years. The very few surviving dictatorships are also likely to self-destruct if left to their own devices.
The second failure of Mr Howard’s argument is selectivity. However appalling, dangerous and recalcitrant, Saddam Hussein is not uniquely so. Iraq and North Korea are defying the norm against nuclear proliferation more seriously than is Iraq. Israel has gone much further: it has actually built some 200 nuclear weapons. All three of these countries and China are also brutal oppressors. Israel has also been in breach of Security Council Resolutions for far longer than Iraq and far more defiantly. The world certainly cannot afford 4 wars to redress all these ills. Two (or many) wrongs do not make a right but the ability to act in the name of principle in relation to Iraq is gravely compromised as long as the United Sates tolerates the continued occupation and oppression of Tibet by China, Palestine by Israel and Kashmir by India, Pakistan and China. The rights of these people to self-determination have to be demanded as assertively as Bagdad’s compliance with its obligations. The Prime Minister did re-iterate support for a Palestinian state but he also endorsed the Israeli ‘right recognised and secure borders’ which is Israel’s justification for its predatory policies and practices. Israel has no greater right to security than does any other state and the crimes of Hamas & Co. in no way excuse Israeli settlements in the occupied territories or its annexation of Jerusalem.
The consequences for world order are also at the heart of the rejection by most governments of the US action on Iraq. For most people on the planet, the question of what Iraq should be allowed to do has been eclipsed by that of how the US should be allowed to behave. In making clear that its prime aim was ‘regime change’ and ‘pre-emptive defence’, the Bush Administration espoused a policy which most of the world calls aggression. In proclaiming from the start that it would act alone regardless of the opinions and interests of all others, it challenged the established world order and the commitments it gave all other governments 57 years ago when it signed the UN Charter and has consistently re-affirmed. In threatening (as did the UK) to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, it has breached the solemn undertakings these two powers gave as part of the nuclear non-proliferation compact, never to use or threaten to use them against countries not so armed. It has further undermined the NPT regime by planning the development of new nuclear weapons. In deciding that protecting commercial secrecy was more important than allowing the world to have an effective regime against biological weapons, it has compromised its claim to be out to curb weapons of mass destruction. In many other ways it has demonstrated a rejection of the multilateral approach (which means taking account of the concerns of others). Its present effort to obtain a semblance of legitimacy by using bribery and coercion in the Security Council is obscene by most standards. And senior officials of this Administration proclaim that multilateral treaties, i.e. commitments given by the US to large numbers of other countries, are not binding. Australia’s interest in a world order such as the Bush Administration seems intent on destroying far surpasses our interest in Saddam’s weapons.
This takes us to the issue of the appropriate Australian response to this situation. Mr Howard rightly said a central consideration has to be our relations with the United States. This is because of our deep dependence and because of the Bush’s Administration’s credible threat to treat all who fail to support it as enemies. One effective response to a bully is that chosen by Mr Howard: join his cabal. A more honourable and democratically defensible strategy is that chosen by Canada and Mexico - two countries even more dependent than Australia on the US and more experienced at dealing with it. Their attitude has been to support the US declared objective of disarming Saddam while maintaining an eloquent silence as to the way the US is pursuing it. A brave patriot would stand up for Australia’s national interests and join the general opposition to the Bush offensive.
At the NPC on Friday, the Prime Minister made a reasoned and eloquent case for his policy of support for US policy on Iraq. He deserves a reasoned response and the public deserves an explanation of why these arguments have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of people and governments around the world.
Mr Howard is right to say that the world would be safer if Saddam Hussein were deprived of the weapons denied to him by the 1991cease-fire agreement and UN Security Council Resolutions. Also that it would be good for world order if Security Council resolution 1441 were implemented and that the Iraqi people would be much better off without this monstrous dictator. But there are three deep problems with the US policy that our PM supports: proportionality, selectivity and its consequences for world order.
In assessing responses to any problem the questions have to be weighed: do the ends justify the means and are the likely costs proportionate to the likely benefits?
In this case, the overwhelming judgement of the planet is a clear ‘No’. Iraq’s neighbours, those most threatened by his weapons and ambitions, (with the special-case exception of Kuwait) see a US invasion of Iraq as far more dangerous to them. Throughout the world, not only Muslims but much of the wider population fear that the Iraqi people will suffer disproportionately. Governments everywhere worry about the likely impact on the world economy of a temporary rise in oil prices and a blow-out of the US budget. In fact such knock-on economic effects of war in Iraq are likely to cause more deaths, word-wide, than did the September 11 terrorist attacks, through the trickle down effect onto the economically most vulnerable individuals. Beyond that, proceeding on the present US course has already gravely split and weakened NATO, the UN and the European Union – the three most constructive human endeavours of the past half century. The excitement of Muslim hostility towards the West is also a major issue, both in terms of its assistance to terrorism and its negative effects on political processes in Muslim countries. For these and other reasons, the world overwhelmingly feels that the proposed ‘cure’ is worse that the status quo. It is also relevant that the lesson of recent history is that dictatorships fall without outside intervention or massive bloodshed and destruction: this has happened dozens of times in the past 40 years. The very few surviving dictatorships are also likely to self-destruct if left to their own devices.
The second failure of Mr Howard’s argument is selectivity. However appalling, dangerous and recalcitrant, Saddam Hussein is not uniquely so. Iraq and North Korea are defying the norm against nuclear proliferation more seriously than is Iraq. Israel has gone much further: it has actually built some 200 nuclear weapons. All three of these countries and China are also brutal oppressors. Israel has also been in breach of Security Council Resolutions for far longer than Iraq and far more defiantly. The world certainly cannot afford 4 wars to redress all these ills. Two (or many) wrongs do not make a right but the ability to act in the name of principle in relation to Iraq is gravely compromised as long as the United Sates tolerates the continued occupation and oppression of Tibet by China, Palestine by Israel and Kashmir by India, Pakistan and China. The rights of these people to self-determination have to be demanded as assertively as Bagdad’s compliance with its obligations. The Prime Minister did re-iterate support for a Palestinian state but he also endorsed the Israeli ‘right recognised and secure borders’ which is Israel’s justification for its predatory policies and practices. Israel has no greater right to security than does any other state and the crimes of Hamas & Co. in no way excuse Israeli settlements in the occupied territories or its annexation of Jerusalem.
The consequences for world order are also at the heart of the rejection by most governments of the US action on Iraq. For most people on the planet, the question of what Iraq should be allowed to do has been eclipsed by that of how the US should be allowed to behave. In making clear that its prime aim was ‘regime change’ and ‘pre-emptive defence’, the Bush Administration espoused a policy which most of the world calls aggression. In proclaiming from the start that it would act alone regardless of the opinions and interests of all others, it challenged the established world order and the commitments it gave all other governments 57 years ago when it signed the UN Charter and has consistently re-affirmed. In threatening (as did the UK) to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, it has breached the solemn undertakings these two powers gave as part of the nuclear non-proliferation compact, never to use or threaten to use them against countries not so armed. It has further undermined the NPT regime by planning the development of new nuclear weapons. In deciding that protecting commercial secrecy was more important than allowing the world to have an effective regime against biological weapons, it has compromised its claim to be out to curb weapons of mass destruction. In many other ways it has demonstrated a rejection of the multilateral approach (which means taking account of the concerns of others). Its present effort to obtain a semblance of legitimacy by using bribery and coercion in the Security Council is obscene by most standards. And senior officials of this Administration proclaim that multilateral treaties, i.e. commitments given by the US to large numbers of other countries, are not binding. Australia’s interest in a world order such as the Bush Administration seems intent on destroying far surpasses our interest in Saddam’s weapons.
This takes us to the issue of the appropriate Australian response to this situation. Mr Howard rightly said a central consideration has to be our relations with the United States. This is because of our deep dependence and because of the Bush’s Administration’s credible threat to treat all who fail to support it as enemies. One effective response to a bully is that chosen by Mr Howard: join his cabal. A more honourable and democratically defensible strategy is that chosen by Canada and Mexico - two countries even more dependent than Australia on the US and more experienced at dealing with it. Their attitude has been to support the US declared objective of disarming Saddam while maintaining an eloquent silence as to the way the US is pursuing it. A brave patriot would stand up for Australia’s national interests and join the general opposition to the Bush offensive.
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
As so often, James, your father makes a great deal of sense. Reasoned, rational, exactly to the point.
James
Storage is cool
Yes, he can be quite sensible. 
I thought the SMH had a couple of interesting things to say :
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/14/1047583703813.html
... which includes this frightening statistic : "Most astonishingly, some 45 per cent of Americans now believe that Saddam was personally involved in the terrorist attacks on September 11 against the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon."
Alan Ramsey, as always, writes an interesting piece :
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/14/1047583700605.html
... as well as this :
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/14/1047583700531.html
Was this last one reported widely in the US?
I thought the SMH had a couple of interesting things to say :
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/14/1047583703813.html
... which includes this frightening statistic : "Most astonishingly, some 45 per cent of Americans now believe that Saddam was personally involved in the terrorist attacks on September 11 against the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon."
Alan Ramsey, as always, writes an interesting piece :
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/14/1047583700605.html
... as well as this :
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/14/1047583700531.html
Was this last one reported widely in the US?
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
James said:
This is traditional 'just war doctrine'. Traditional just war doctrine is based in the supposition that soveriegn states will operate under certain predictable rules. These days are unprecedented. You can not apply just war doctrine to a state who refuses to play by the 'rules' much less an entity which has no state (Al-Q). Additionally just war doctrine lays the onus at the feet of the aggressor and defender, not their friends.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
I can see why you Aussies are so bend out of shape. At the very least your government should be explaining to your near neighbors what differentiates them from Iraq with regards to Aus policy.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
From Part 6: THE THREAT OF A "ROGUE" NUCLEAR STRIKE
If we are to understand the measure of the present threat that we must realize that we are not fighting a Clausewitzian war, and there are immense dangers ahead of us if we do not squarely face the implications of this fact: they are not playing by the same rules of realism that we are. And it is this that renders so much public debate so historically dated.
The motivations of those who want to murder us are not complicated: To watch an American city go up into a fireball is its own reward.
This is the lesson that 9/11 should teach us in dealing with the fantasists of the Islamic world. A fantasy does not need to make any sense - that is the whole point of having one.
In dealing with the Japanese or with the Soviet Union, we were never forced to wonder whether they might delegate their actions to such utterly informal and irresponsible entities as Al Qaeda. The threat they posed they posed in their own right, and hence they were accountable for their actions, and knew that we would hold them accountable. But this is no longer the case. For example, even today, over a year later, there is still debate about the possible connection between Iraq and the events of 9/11 - a debate that may well never be resolved. And this means that if a nuclear device were to be detonated in downtown Chicago tomorrow, from an unknown source, could we really count on being able to find its "return address" if in fact it was the work of a "rogue" state? We know that, in fact, the answer is no; and we know that "they" know this as well; and they know we know - all of which only begins to suggest the surrealism that is characteristic of the crisis with which we are faced. For it means that if they chose to delegate such a horrendous act to an entity like Al Qaeda, they would force us into an impossible choice: Either we accept such an attack without retaliating, or else we are forced to lash out blindly - and in the same spirit of blood feud and vendetta with which the attack was made. And either choice transcends our present categories of comprehension.
The first "rogue" nuclear strike - a strike from an unknown and even unknowable source - is a genie that once out of the bottle can never be put back in. It would cause an overnight catastrophic transformation of the world. In many ways we must be grateful that Al Qaeda's fingerprints were over all 9-11. For what if we had had no clue - even today - who had perpetrated such an act?
If we are to understand the measure of the present threat that we must realize that we are not fighting a Clausewitzian war, and there are immense dangers ahead of us if we do not squarely face the implications of this fact: they are not playing by the same rules of realism that we are. And it is this that renders so much public debate so historically dated.
The motivations of those who want to murder us are not complicated: To watch an American city go up into a fireball is its own reward.
This is the lesson that 9/11 should teach us in dealing with the fantasists of the Islamic world. A fantasy does not need to make any sense - that is the whole point of having one.
In dealing with the Japanese or with the Soviet Union, we were never forced to wonder whether they might delegate their actions to such utterly informal and irresponsible entities as Al Qaeda. The threat they posed they posed in their own right, and hence they were accountable for their actions, and knew that we would hold them accountable. But this is no longer the case. For example, even today, over a year later, there is still debate about the possible connection between Iraq and the events of 9/11 - a debate that may well never be resolved. And this means that if a nuclear device were to be detonated in downtown Chicago tomorrow, from an unknown source, could we really count on being able to find its "return address" if in fact it was the work of a "rogue" state? We know that, in fact, the answer is no; and we know that "they" know this as well; and they know we know - all of which only begins to suggest the surrealism that is characteristic of the crisis with which we are faced. For it means that if they chose to delegate such a horrendous act to an entity like Al Qaeda, they would force us into an impossible choice: Either we accept such an attack without retaliating, or else we are forced to lash out blindly - and in the same spirit of blood feud and vendetta with which the attack was made. And either choice transcends our present categories of comprehension.
The first "rogue" nuclear strike - a strike from an unknown and even unknowable source - is a genie that once out of the bottle can never be put back in. It would cause an overnight catastrophic transformation of the world. In many ways we must be grateful that Al Qaeda's fingerprints were over all 9-11. For what if we had had no clue - even today - who had perpetrated such an act?