[shamrock_uk]

Ok Timber, I have a friend who's been following this thread closely and has actually done a reply for you which I shall post now. Would be interesting to hear your response. All the following is Kulveer's writing, with the odd edit from me for clarity:

“It is nothing more than an excuse to do nothing. If you kill terrorists and their sympathizers, you will eventually get them all. If along the way, all Palestinians become terrorist based on the reasoning you state above, then the equation simply becomes one where killing all the terrorists also equals killing all the Palestinians. If that is their choice, so be it. But it is wrong to cowtow to terrorists. There is only one right answer -- overwhelming and brutal reactionary force in opposition to any terrorist activity.”

Replace ‘terrorists’ with ‘crusaders’, and ‘Palestinians’ with ‘Westerners’, and that statement doesn’t look out of place coming from Osama Bin Laden. Sad to see just how much similarity there is in the narrow minded thinking!

First of all, let’s analyse this argument premise by premise.

‘It is nothing more than an excuse to do nothing.’

NOT using ‘brutal’ and ‘overwhelming’ force does not mean you should do nothing. First mistake by Timber. It is the technique people like him use to justify their violence and aggression, by wrongly defining any dissenter’s argument. It is also dependent on the idea that ‘might makes right’, and just because we are better at organized violence, [i.e. through an army], we can use that to justify our deeds. Returning to the point, any fool knows that it is not ‘an excuse to do nothing’, it simply means a different MEANS should be used to achieve the ENDS. And why so? Simply because the other means would be more effective, nothing more, nothing less.

‘Terrorism’ is not a disease, it is the SYMPTOM of a disease. And until that disease is cured from its causes, the symptoms will persist ad infinitum, no matter how much you try and remove them. Unless of course you could pursue genocide and wipe out all Palestinians, but then I’m sure other enemies would rise to replace them.

‘If that is their choice, so be it.’

I doubt it very much that becoming a terrorist is simply a matter of choice. Another false justification used by Timber and people with similar views to justify their military excesses. Just how much free-will goes into the decision to become a terrorist? If all the conditions which exist in Palestine, poverty, humiliation, oppression, were removed, then I’m sure the ‘choice’ to become a terrorist would be different. Suicide bombing is despicable, but then if the Palestinians do not have an army to defend themselves, what should they do? No doubt, if they did have an army, it would be deemed ‘terrorist’.

What we are looking at here is a distributional problem. Because Israel is the most powerful state in the region, with its 200+ stockpile of nukes and huge American funding, they have the power to ‘define’ what a terrorist is, and what ‘legitimate’ military action is. Simply assuming that Palestinians should accept their fate because they are weaker is very arrogant of Israel and the US. Of course, they will not accept their fate and so they are called terrorists. I’d rather call them freedom fighters.

Imagine this situation:

There is a big bully in a playground who abuses other children. When scolded by his mother for doing so, the bully justifies his action by saying the other were making fun of him or were not friendly to him or whatever. Now, most of the children just shut up and let the bully do what he wants, and they don’t get punched. A few of the other children though, don’t want to take the bully’s s***, and so, even though much weaker, try and stand up to the bully, which results in them being punched in the face. Of course, no one will say the bully was wrong for punching the kid in the face, because that kid shouldn’t have stood up to him.

But seeing that one kid stand up for himself, others start to follow, fed up of being abused by the bully. One by one, all these kids attempt to resist the bully, but since he is so big and strong and ruthless, he punches them all in the face one by one. Eventually we have a situation where all the kids stand up to the bully, and he punches all of them one by one and justifies his actions by saying they are all now being mean to him. It was the kids’ fault of course, for standing up to him. Who do they think they are? So now they all deserve their big fat punch in the face.

I hope you see the analogy I am trying to make, but that is the sort of thing Timber suggests would justify wiping out the Palestinians if they became ‘terrorist’. I’d like Timber to define what a terrorist is. What is it essentially about the actions of a terrorist that make him a terrorist? We will carry on the argument from there. When people with a political will are excluded from the political process, terrorism usually results.

[ 05-26-2004, 11:55 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]