“Once you pay the Dane-geld
you never get rid of the Dane.”
Yes, a grand old expression. Well put. Ask the guys who try to pay off the mafia with protection money how well that works also.
But I do agree with MMI:
“If, hypothetically, the US or any other state were (perhaps clandestinely) engaged in immoral/unethical behavior which spurred the terrorist response, is it right to continue with that behavior, just to show them that terrorism doesn’t pay”
Well it was my understanding(Which may be wrong) is that OBL is really trying to establish a pan-islamic state consisting of all the muslims lands.(Whatever that means. For all I know that means Spain and parts of Austria) So basically it’d be next to be impossible to give them what they want.(An islamic superpower) Admittedly I’m basing this on what I’ve read in the news and his actions.(I mean hell, you can argue OBL is responsible for the deaths of more muslims than the US and Israel combined.) You might be able to negotiate with the other terrorists however.
You liken Algerian terrorism to Palestinian terrorism and accuse others of false arguments? Those two are as alike as apples and oranges. The former both have terrorists and the later are both fruit. The similarities end about there though.
To suggest that Israel is the completely intransigent one while the Palestinians/Arabs have been forthcoming and sincere in there attempts to find a workable compromise is disingenuous in the extreme. There has been intransigence and willingness to compromise (real willingness) aplenty from both sides.
The only real problem I see is the nature of a democratic society in Israel prevents a consistent approach to the problem at hand. Both hawks and doves have had their turn at the helm of Israeli policy and none have seemed to stick it out long enough to put to bed a consistent policy for their country. The Palestinians on the other hand tend to steer a more consistent course (although even they have their troubles as some groups opposed to a given compromise or just pissed they don’t have a seat at the table attempt to thwart the process of the moment). It’s sad really as on a few occasions some real compromise seemed to be at hand and then one side or the other sabotaged the whole deal (often with that purpose but once or twice through an unfortunate confluence of events). Both Israel and the Palestinians are guilty of this. The compromises were nowhere near complete, final answers but they were honest beginnings that never had a chance.
You say a hardline response does not work as there is no evidence it ever has worked. Fair enough and fine rhetoric but it sidesteps the very real and difficult issues faced in some of these situations. Algeria was a relatively simple and easy answer compared to Israel. Consider this analogy: American Indians form a terrorist group that carries out an ongoing campaign of bombings on US soil. There cause is the removal of all non-native Americans from the continent. The US government takes a hardline response and refuses to negotiate and the bombings continue for decades. It seems to be your contention that these terrorists should be negotiated with to find a suitable compromise…say everything west of the Mississippi or if that’s too much maybe give them California.
An absurd analogy you may claim but in its broadest strokes not so different from the Israeli/Palestinian issue. A native people who feel they were unduly ousted from land that was originally theirs and they want it back. To get it back they will have to carve out a portion of the existing country. Living on reservations is not acceptable…they want their own government.
You can see that the US would never give in to such demands and the Israeli/Palestinian issue is even more complicated as it includes deeply held religious issues (Jerusalem mainly that they both desperately want) in addition to the land and governmental issues. Further, in Israel, you have a country that was formed following the “Final Solution”, is surrounded by enemies who have attacked (major, whole army coming at you stuff) them several times and who depend on a foreign country (the US) for support to maintain their existence. Can you blame them for having somewhat of a bunker mentality?
Trying to find a solution to problems is good and proper and better than just hunkering down and saying you’ll never talk but while it looks great on paper real world implementation of doing that is decidedly more complex.
Sorry about that.
Look, terrorism exists because of some other problem. Sometimes the terrorists are justified, e.g. Palestinians; sometimes they are unjustified, e.g. Al Qaeda; sometimes both sides have legitimate beefs, e.g. Northern Ireland. I’ve seen no reason to conclude that terrorism is a first step in any of these problems. Should we really believe that if Saudi Arabia had allowed a political and social environment where citizens can petition the government for redress of grievences in a meaningful sense that OMB would have jumped straight into terrorism instead of using the political process? To say that terrorists shant be negotiated with is to say that “even though we refused to work with you and had a hand in the escalating malignancy of the situation, we still expect you to give up completely before we’ll talk”.
Nor is there any reason to assume that addressing the root cause with the terrorists will create any moral hazard. Think of terrorism as an extreme act of civil disobedience if that helps. Just as Thoreau went to jail for his crimes, so should (at least some) of the terrorists. There’s no reason to think of them as getting off scot-free just because we realize that, hey!, they feel that there is a pretty big fucking problem going on here and that they’re willing to kill and (more importantly?) die to solve it. To put it analogously, it makes no sense for management to demand that the union go back to work before it will discuss how to end the strike.
That’s good, because apples and oranges are quite similar indeed and easily comparable. See for example the work done by Scott A. Sandford of the NASA/Ames Research Center.
More importantly, I’m not interested in being led off topic. My response was to the following argument:
[ul]
[li]1. “If you give a mouse a cookie…”[/li][li]2. Therefore negotiating with terrorists only encourages more terrorism.[/ul][/li]This is not an argument. It has no weight. It is not a viable policy position. It is not incumbent upon me to argue that the contrary is true, it is incumbent on those asserting their position to argue that it is true.
When I point out obvious numerous failures of the hard-line school, crying false analogy does not make the hard-line school correct. Nor does making a false analogy to fruit have any impact on the credibility of my analogy. Especially when the aforementioned fruit are quite easily comparable.
Now the argument you seem to have moved to is:
[ul][li]1. Things are complicated in the real world,[/li][li]2. Therefore, we should be intransigent and not try to solve the problem.[/ul][/li]Many real world problems get solved all the time, there is no reason to assume that others cannot. We do know that refusing to solve problems in the real world doesn’t seem to be very effective, because if it was, then the “you stop the violence, then we’ll go to the negotiating table” method of crisis management would have been effective. Indeed, it is your job to show that such a policy is effective.
Yes to point #1 and to point #2 you must have missed this:
There are indeed many similarities between apples and oranges and there are many similarities between Algerian terrorists from decades ago and Palestinian terrorists of today. There are also a fair number of differences that make all of these decidedly unique.
You suggest that shutting yourself off to any talks is an improper and provably bad strategy. Fine…fair enough and I agree with you. However you oversimplify the alternatives available and refuse to flesh them out as it is not incumbent upon you to do so. You ignore the very real possibilities of two sides being so diametrically opposed that maybe it is impossible for them to find common ground. They need to talk to be sure and see if that is the case but then Israel and the Palestinians have talked…and talked…and talked…
I simply do not see how you can support the idea that we should negotiate with the likes of Osama bin Laden after he wastes the WTC rather than tell such a group the only thing they will get from the US is a B-52 flying overhead and unloading. Your stance seems to be that this will never work…maybe it won’t. Maybe ObL will be undaunted and continue…I’m sure he will if he can. I simply cannot see the correct alternative. Engage the Saudis to reform their government? Reasonable but if it ever would work (an iffy thing at best) it would likely take decades and in the meantime attacks continue.
Your position looks fantastic on paper. If you’d just show me a real-world application of it to a so far difficult problem (e.g. Israel/Palestine) you’ll have sold me. Till then it is all just airy, if noble, words.