De Bursac: We will find a way. It might fail, and if it does, and I’m-I’m still alive, I will try to pass on my information, my mission, to someone else. Perhaps to a better man who does not fail, because there’s always someone else. That is the mistake the Germans always make with people they try to destroy. There will be always someone else…
I happened to catch this snippet on TV today in this old Humphrey Bogart film. It struck me that this is the mistake we make in our “War on Terror”, the mistake the Israelis are making in fighting Hezbollah. “There will be always someone else…” unless and until you fix the conditions that lead those people to fight you.
Buzzflash today:
Warfare intensifies in Southern Lebanon
Saturday’s Hezbollah barrage brought to 33 the number of Israeli civilians killed by rocket fire in 25 days of fighting. Forty-five Israeli soldiers have been killed in battles with Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon, including one on Saturday. Some 300,000 Israelis have fled their homes. An Associated Press count showed at least 567 Lebanese have been killed, including 489 civilians confirmed dead by the Health Ministry, 28 Lebanese soldiers and at least 50 Hezbollah guerrillas. The Lebanese government’s Higher Relief Council said 907 Lebanese had been killed in the conflict. Estimates of Lebanese homeless range from 800,000 to 1 million. 8/6
One Response
I have a little, teensy problem with this one. Many, many people have articulated their frustration with the War on Terror by asserting that, instead of fighting this war, the US should be looking inward for a way to amend our own behavior, which is the cause of the world’s hate for Americans in the first place.
While there are, I’m sure, many people around the world who don’t like Americans because of our behavior (I’ve met them, and most of them are also Americans), this belief assumes that Muslim extremists, such as those who destroyed the World Trade Center, had some concrete reason for hating America, something that could be amended in the first place. Maybe we overstayed our welcome in Saudi, or stationed troops in a mosque in Kuwait, or something like that. But the fact is, according to their beliefs, God himself has condemned us as infidels, and there is nothing we can ever do to reverse God’s decision.
How do you fix the conditions that lead Muslim extremists to fight you? Bin Laden himself has said that if every American dropped to his knees right now, repented our county’s transgressions and converted to Islam, he would still kill every one of us. At first, he said his war on us was because of American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, but he has since amended that. This isn’t because we’ve done something wrong – it’s because we’re Americans. Plain and simple.
Zarqawi once explained that they “love death,” and want to kill all Americans and anyone who helps Americans. Asked about the killing of an aid worker in Iraq, who’d been in the country to help Muslims, he said, “He cannot help us. He is an American, and he will always be an American.”
Personally, I can’t imagine what we can do to fix those conditions. It’s just this simple: the people the US is fighting in its War on Terror are people who take particular Islamic texts from the Q’uran to mean that God wants them to kill all Americans, period. There is nothing Americans can do to assuage their hate, or to change their minds – and there never was. I’ve met some of these people. It’s the Will of God, don’tcha know.
Clearly, there are things that must be done differently in the War on Terror, which isn’t really a war on terror but a political campaign designed to “show” how our politicians are fighting terrorism. But we’ll only hang ourselves if we accept the politician-generated rhetoric of “let’s fix ourselves first.”
~scruff