A Really Smart Speech

A lot of good points in this speech by the prime minister of Malayasia.

He draws a very important distinction between local "terrorist" groups and those with global ambitions...ie Al Queda.

It seems to me there are several levels of misunderstanding of the threat of global Islamo-Fascist terrorism.

1. Denial of terrorism as a problem. Mostly these folks will invoke the idea that the US and Israel are terrorist states and that "terrorist" is just a term the powerful use to demonize the oppressed enemy. Very few reasonable people fall into this category of understanding - if one cannot see the difference between Al Queda's claims to a legitimate cause versus the US claims to being a legitimate government, one has a serious lack of understanding of the way the world functions.

2. The US/Israel as a principal cause of terrorism. There are others who view terrorism as a problem, but see Israel and/or the US as principal cause of the problem. The US for our support of various anti-communist groups during the cold war, Israel for occupying Palestine, etc. There is an appeal to this argument, but I find it fundamentally flawed...it is to blame the victim for the crime. Essentially, it is saying the women deserved to be raped for dressing a certain way.

Certainly, there are legitimate concerns with the US and Israel's behaviour as states. In no way, however, does this legitimate terror as a tactic. Further, it's simply not true that the US is a root cause of terror. The causes of terrorism are ideology mixed with means, mixed with money. The US is not responsible for Wahabbism. The US government is not responsible for people's misery. I do not blame the US government when I'm lonely and cannot get laid and can't get a job. And I live in the US. I don't see how a celibate, unemployed Saudi thinks the US government is somehow responsible for him not having a job and getting laid - our reach simply isn't that far. It's his own local government and country that deny him those things (and in a global age, we are connected yes, but that does not mean the powerful are responsible for the well-being and happiness of each individual. That is still up to the individual and the community)

3. We are not in a war against terrorism. Some recognize global terrorism as a problem, not principally caused by the US/Israel, but deny we are at war...or to the extent we are at war - it has been our doing. We've been attacked several times over the past 10 years, each time growing in escalation. Osama declared war on us and we laughed. We can pretend we are not at war, but they are at war with us, so it's an inescapable fact that we must fight, or else lose.

4. How we are conducting the war is wrong. There are many, many levels to this argument that I will not go into in this post, but I think if we all get here, it's a good start for discussion.