CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:
I would be very interested to hear if Bhurzum was ever told what to expect if he were captured? Did they ever say, "Don't worry, torture doesn't work".
Bhurzum has already replied himself, but for myself-
It doesn't matter if it does work, it isn't worth the political capital it costs. The vast number of military men and women warned Bush Jr that it was a bad idea, and it was. It cost the US standing in the world and the moral high-ground in the eyes of other nations. We were strong enough not to have to use it, and it made us look weak and desperate.
Our values, the values of the enlightenment exemplified by our constitution needs to be the highest standard in the world. The values of our civilization should be above reproach, not a race to the bottom. The minute we torture, or suspend somebody's rights because of their religion we get in a race to the bottom. We don't need to do that. We have a juggernaut of military and economic strength. Torture and denying human rights is a measure for weak-minded bumper-sticker mentalities to feel revenge against those that hurt us, not something we need to justify by framing this as a fight to the finish. It isn't. We are in no real danger from Islam. We are in more danger of using outside threats to do irreversible damage to our democracy and suspend rights. Maybe first against muslims, but once you open that box, it will be used against all kinds of threats, and one day that threat may be you.[/quote]
I couldn't agree more. As I said elsewhere, there are three question we need to ask when facing terrorism, What compromises are we willing to make to the constituents of the terrorists (Just acknowledging their grievances or our past sins can go a long way), What values are we willing to sacrifice and for how long... because at the very minimum there needs to be some restrictions on freedom for the sake of security. The accepted wisdom among the experts is that we should stick to the rule of war and sacrifice as few of our values as possible -- to do otherwise is counter productive.
Having said that, that is just the public face of counter terrorism. The reality is that while the police and military are containing the situation, the spooks are using every dirty trick in the book.
To give you some idea, the strategy in Northern Ireland seemed to be to cultivate informants. This was done by spying on them until they could get dirt they could use. If they couldn't get dirt they would throw dirt. The nature of the blackmail ranged from revealing extra marital affairs, embezzlement and stealing from the PIRA, to threatening to make it look like they were already informants.
Allegedly, what happens next is a selective pruning of the terrorist tree. If the allegations are to believed, there were targeted assassinations, either by special forces or by Loyalists tipped off about who to whack. This would remove competent terrorists and move up terrorists who were incompetent or informants. After a while, as more and more of their plans were foiled, the terrorists would suspect there are informants in their midst. The security forces would ensure that these witch hunts always got the wrong man.
When Burzum said that terrorists are still in place but it is too dangerous to go get them, my first thought was that he is either on the payroll, somebody close to him is, or there are bugs all over him.
Anywhoo, the point is, you will hear counter terror experts say, "The effort must be intelligence led". What that means in reality is bribery, blackmail, and helicopter rides over the atlantic. I really don't think we should be under any illusion that this goes on and has been a large part of successful counter terrorism campaigns.
What changed in the second Gulf War, was the idea that it could or should be legitimized because it is justified. It is actually very hard to justify it. You have to begin at least with the question, are they criminals or are they combatants? Because under our law both have rights, so "doing nasty things to nasty people" is not really an argument. So in my opinion it is best to sin quietly, and the evidence seems to suggest that it only works if you do it quietly.
The second point is that what we have done in the past shows no sign of working this time. Islam is a very different animal to the political ideologies we have fought before. Those political ideologies had political goals that we could at least negotiate over. (I should stress that I am aware that terrorist goals generally far exceed what is required to appease their constituents and to some degree the same is true of Islam). If I am right and what we did before won't work, we need a new approach.
Where I disagree with you is the idea that Islam is no threat to us. You have already named one of the threats which is that our society goes full Nazi on islam and we lose who we are. But you can't just tell "us" we shouldn't do that, neither you or I, or the politicians actually have much control over that other than to provide an alternative solution. If the problem isn't seen to be being addressed and justice done, we will see torches and pitchforks.
But that is not the only danger. There are almost three million muslims in the UK, there are millions more across Europe. As is often pointed out, muslims are the main recipient of muslim terrorism, and while bombs might not be going off in european muslim communities, you can bet your life they are being intimidated and/or indoctrinated. On one level this means that we really cannot trust any of them, Mohammed from the Kebab shop might be a nice guy, but for all we know somebody might have made him an offer he can't refuse. If the IRA can take families hostage and force innocent people to drive bombs to army checkpoints, I am sure IS can do it. This means that there are potentially three quarters of a million enemy combatants landed on our shores?
You have the additional problem that 3 million people is a sizable voting block and lobby who could be under the influence of extremists.
There is also the problem of unseen terrorism. Where terrorism is most successful is against individuals and businesses. Corporations have no conscience and care only about profit, this makes them really easy for terrorists to manipulate. Unlike the public at large, when threatened they will do a cost/benefit analysis and conclude it is best to give into terrorist demands. Likewise individuals have vulnerabilities such as family. Related to this is the issue of organized crime which inevitably follows terrorists. It is all rot which undermines society.
If we look to history and ask has a situation like this happened before and what did we do about it, the fact of the matter is that we have purged the country of papists and puritans, it was a bit messy but it turned out okay in the end. Actually, that's how we got to the culture we are now trying to protect. We were intolerant of the intolerant.
If you have any other suggestions I am open to ideas.
Feeling threatened leads to all sorts of ugly tribalism that is out of place with western values. We simply don't need to stoop to that level, and we will win hearts and minds by not doing so.
I disagree with the last part. Ugly tribalism is an integral part of western values, we celebrate it in our national sport and elsewhere. It is a part of human nature that I doubt we will ever overcome. Even greed wasn't an incentive enough to last and we are rejecting ideas of globalism. We are rejecting the EU, we love our little tribes.
As for hearts and minds, this is an idea I would never reject out of hand, it is usually the solution. But what the fuck more can we do? We used to dig wells and give their goats vaccines. The ones fleeing to the freedom of the West now, iphone in hand, wearing Nike sneakers, still want to kill us or rape us. What more can we do to show them our way is better?
This is partly because we have been screwing them over since the end of the First World War. If you think they are going to get over that any time soon, it's worth remembering that they haven't forgiven us for the crusades yet. I think if the whole of NATO liberated Palestine it would be too little too late. And that is only looking at things from a political point of view, never mind religious prophecies of world domination.
There really is nowhere to go with Hearts and Minds. I have no doubt they will come around to our way of thinking eventually, but optimistically that could take 3-4 generations. In the meantime we need to contain them or isolate them.
