Good Guys, Bad Guys, and Comfort Zones
NBC News reports that the suicide bomber responsible for killing seven C.I.A. agents in Afghanistan was a double agent working for Al Qaeda:
The suicide bombing on a CIA base in Afghanistan last week was carried out by a Jordanian doctor who was an al-Qaida double-agent, Western intelligence officials told NBC News.Initial reports said that the attack, which killed seven CIA officers, was carried out by a member of the Afghan National Army.
According to Western intelligence officials, the perpetrator was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, 36, an al-Qaida sympathizer from Zarqa, which is also the hometown of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant Islamist believed responsible for several devastating attacks in Iraq.
Farther down in the article, we get this comment from an unnamed intelligence officer:
A senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC the CIA is “looking closely at every aspect of the Khost attack.”"The agency is determined to continue pursuing aggressive counterterrorism operations. Last week’s attack will be avenged. Some very bad people will eventually have a very bad day,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
This remark struck me with particular force because of a blog post I read late last night, by Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque. And, in turn, I made another mental connection: to some discussion that’s been going on in one of TMV’s comments threads, about the way political discussions tend to never stray far from a narrow comfort zone of familiar topics. It’s uncomfortable — or it can be — to challenge our assumptions.
And so we come back to the counterterrorism effort that these seven C.I.A. agents were part of. But were they actually part of a counterterrorism effort? Or were they part of a system — a system that includes both the C.I.A. and Al Qaeda, among many, many other actors?
Let me say — or rather, reiterate — up front that it is my personal view that the form of vigorous activism known as non-violence is the only way, or the best way, that we can hope to even begin to address the inherent and intractable conflicts of human existence in a genuinely effective profound, sustainable and humane manner. That is the ideal I strive toward.
Of course, I also recognize that being what I am — a white man of Christian heritage living safely and comfortably under the penumbra of empire — it is easy for me to espouse this ideal. No drone fired in the distant black sky is going to kill my children tonight as they sleep warmly in their beds. No raiding party of assassins is going to tear down the door of my parents’ house tonight and shoot them at the dinner table. No one with a grudge against me — or simply in need of quick cash — is going to sell me into the captivity of a worldwide gulag. I’m not going to be caught in the crossfire of marauding mercenaries on my way to work. I’m not going to wake tomorrow in a refugee camp, my home and livelihood abandoned in the wake of a ravaging “counterterrorism” operation. No foreign soldier is going to shoot me, or abuse me, or humiliate me, or simply refuse to let me pass down the street of my own city. I’m not going to be stopped, “profiled,” or regarded with suspicion or hatred simply because of my skin color or the cultural or religious etymology of my name.
If I lived under the bootheel of such forces, I don’t how I would react, how firmly I could hold to my ideal. …
Nonetheless, despite all these caveats and complexities, the ideal abides. I decry, denounce and mourn for the use of violence. Each act of violence — however understandable it might be in context — is a vast, ruinous defeat for our common humanity.
[...]
Each such act perpetuates the cycle of violence, the horrific dynamic of blowback: a self-perpetuating feedback loop that uses itself to engender more violence, in new and expanding forms. We are living today in the midst of a particularly virulent form of this dynamic, the so-called “War on Terror,” which I think has been designed — more or less deliberately so, although the obscene ignorance and arrogance of the powerful have also played their fateful part in unwittingly exacerbating these evils — to rage on without chronological end, without geographical, limits, and without any moral, social, legal or financial restraints. …
The Terror War is not an event, or a campaign, or even a crusade; it is a system. Its purpose is not to eliminate “terrorism” (however this infinitely elastic term is defined) but to perpetuate itself, to do what it does: make war. This system can be immensely rewarding, in many different ways, for those who operate or assist it, whether in government, media, academia, or business. This too is a self-sustaining dynamic, a feedback loop that gives money, power and attention to those who serve the system; this elevated position then allows them to accrue even more money, power and attention, until in the end — as we can plainly see today — any alternative voices and viewpoints are relegated to the margins. They are “unserious.” They are unimportant. They are not allowed to penetrate or alter the operations of the system.
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8 Responses to “Good Guys, Bad Guys, and Comfort Zones”
In this circumstance, pacifism will only serve to embolden our enemies.
The argument is moot.
We should leave Afghanistan not because we think that we can “bestow” humanity and thus gain respect of our enemies, but because it is costing us too much. We need to leave Afghanistan so than we can rebuild our nation’s wealth, regroup, and rearm appropriately in order to defend against the inevitable attack or for another offensive.
Muslims have been converting conquered populations at the point of a sword for nearly two thousand years. Pacifism will only serve to get our throats cut.
I think you are a tad confused, it's only year 1431 AH.
You are wrong….
Muhammad ibn ‘Abdull?h (Arabic: ?; Transliteration: Mu?ammad;[2] pronounced [m???mmæd] (? listen); also spelled Mohammed or Muhammed)[3][4][5] (ca. 570/571 Mecca[?????? ]/[ ?????? ] – June 8, 632 Medina),[6] is the founder of the religion of Islam [ ???????? ] and is regarded by Muslims as a messenger and prophet of God (Arabic: ????? All?h), the last and the greatest law-bearer in a series of Islamic prophets as taught by the Qur'an 33:40–40. Muslims thus consider him the restorer of an uncorrupted original monotheistic faith (isl?m) of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets.[7][8][9] He was also active as a diplomat, merchant, philosopher, orator, legislator, reformer, military general, and, according to Muslim belief, an agent of divine action.[10]
Born in 570 in the Arabian city of Mecca,[11] he was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the care of his uncle Abu Talib. He later worked mostly as a merchant, as well as a shepherd, and was first married by age 25. Discontented with life in Mecca, he retreated to a cave in the surrounding mountains for meditation and reflection. According to Islamic beliefs it was here, at age 40, in the month of Ramadan, where he received his first revelation from God. Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that “God is One”, that complete “surrender” to Him (lit. isl?m) is the only way (d?n)[12] acceptable to God, and that he himself was a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as other Islamic prophets.[9][13][14]
Muhammad gained few followers early on, and was met with hostility from some Meccan tribes; he and his followers were treated harshly. To escape persecution Muhammad and his followers migrated to Medina (then known as Yathrib) in the year 622. This event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. In Medina, Muhammad united the conflicting tribes, and after eight years of fighting with the Meccan tribes, his followers, who by then had grown to ten thousand, conquered Mecca. In 632, a few months after returning to Medina from his Farewell pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and died. By the time of his death, most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam; and he united the tribes of Arabia into a single Muslim religious polity.[15][16]
The revelations (or Ayat, lit. “Signs of God”)—which Muhammad reported receiving until his death—form the verses of the Qur'an, regarded by Muslims as the “Word of God” and around which the religion is based. Besides the Qur'an, Muhammad’s life (sira) and traditions (sunnah) are also upheld by Muslims. They discuss Muhammad and other prophets of Islam with reverence, adding the phrase peace be upon him whenever their names are mentioned.[17] While conceptions of Muhammad in medieval Christendom and premodern times were largely negative, appraisals in modern times have been far less so.[14][18] Besides this, his life and deeds have been debated by followers and opponents over the centuries.
If by “nearly two thousand years” you mean “about fifteen hundred years” then you'd be right.
One man's interpretation of “about” is another man's point of argument not worth mentioning.
Muslims have been converting conquered populations at the point of a sword for nearly two thousand years. Pacifism will only serve to get our throats cut.”
Although I enjoyed your historical reproductions, I don't equate sending people sent to bomb me as “converting”. If I throw a punch at you, no matter how justified I am, you have the right and the automatic response to “duck” and respond in kind. As you yourself have pointed out, this war on us goes back quite a ways (Kenya, Tanzania), well before Afghanistan.
I really don't see your point.
What is your complaint, historical inaccuracy or “kill vs. convert” with this particular terrorist attempt?
We need to leave Afghanistan.”
My point is we shouldn't disengage. The history comment was an aside.