A self-radicalized member of the Islamic State drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing at least 15 people on New Year’s Day. Once again, we’re pondering how to deploy counterterrorism against opponents of US policy in the Middle East.
You Can’t Kill an Idea. Can You Spy On It?
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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“SELF-radicalized”?!?!?
US military involvement in the Islamic world goes back to at least 1801. (That’s 7.5 times as many years [30 /-] as the US had been relentlessly provoking Russia to make its “unprovoked” entry into Ukraine in 2022.)
The US manipulation, provocation and torment inflicted upon the Islamic world had so increased in intensity and frequency that the dramatic 9/11 blow back forced the Cheney-Bush administration to declare “the war on terror.”
Of course, said war has “progressed” more to one WITH hired, mercenary terrorists but was, from its start, a war that effectively recruited many more terrorists than it ever eliminated.
To begin to counteract the results of the myriad, interwoven societal institutions preventing Americans from knowing who and what their country really is, scan the 3 articles about historic US military operations accessible from the following link:
https://tinyurl.com/y2fnkbz8 while noting how many Islamic countries have been involved from the listing at this link:
https://tinyurl.com/2wpyy4hu
Not to go too meta … but an ISIS by any other name …
People will, generally, use the system — whatever that system is — until it becomes impossible to achieve a goal through that system. Often, people will put up with a great deal of nonsense before finally realizing how dysfunctional the system is. And quite a few systems have been merrily dysfunctioning for quite a while now — college, jobs, home ownership. Just like the boiler at the Overlook, a lot of needles are either approaching red, are in the red, or are solidly resting on the far peg.
What ISIS has done, is doing, will do? Right now, somewhere in this great land of ours called ‘Mericuh, someone is modifying a drone to carry a pistol. And they know exactly who they’ll use it on. All those teens and 20somethings who grew up playing those highly complicated videogames? Ever watch them do it? It’s like the Ginsu chef slicing a tomato paper thin while making a rose out of a radish. They won’t miss their targets. And once the trend catches on? Wasting NPCs in a video game is just practice for when you take out the boss.
It’ll make ISIS look like your little sister having a tantrum at her sixth birthday party.
The agents of repression never seem to understand that the more they crank up the repression, the more repression there is.
Or….maybe they do, and they think they can win. But the general direction of events seems to indicate that the more the US tries to cling to world hegemony, the faster it slips away.
> Or….maybe they do, and they think they can win.
You hit the nail on the head. Whether before, on October 7, or after, there are many in Israel and Palestine who think that being violent will give them the win. This is all despite the decades to centuries of evidence that indicates that it is much more effective to instead create a peace treaty based upon mutual respect (e.g., Israel’s treaties with Egypt and Jordan).
Closer to home, twenty years of violence in Afghanistan led to … those twenty years of violence in Afghanistan plus the bonus of continuing violence in Afghanistan. Nor have our military efforts in Iraq, Libya, Syria delivered peace and security.