State Terrorism Vastly Worse, Individual Terrorism Logical
September 6, 2007
Matthew Carr
This is a superb book that should be read in conjunction with Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Terrorism is nothing more nor less than individual and small group asymmetric violence that breaks the state's monopoly on violence.
THe author is to be commended for stating in blunt and ably-documented terms that terrorism is a logical asymmetric response and it is not senseless nor cowardly but rather coherent and calculated.
I share the author's view that most Western analysts of terrorism are witness, uninformed, and devoid of historical, cultural, or contextual analytic skills and knowledge. Most on the right, including the Zionists, push their ideological beliefs rather than the empirical evidence. As the author notes, Israel has genocided the Palestinians and out-terrorized their opponents time and again (while also attacking the USS Liberty, a war crime that will never be forgotten by our men and women in uniform).
There are other books that have documents the use by the extreme right of fake leftist terrorist actions that are actually extreme right and fascist actions intended to increase the totalitarian and fascist nature of the state. 9-11 certainly enabled Dick Cheney to do that. See American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America and Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency.
In the author's view, the CIA created the conditions for the Islamic jihad with its over-turning of the Iranian election results and restoration of the hated Shah to the throne–as we learn in Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, CIA has been all too fond of dictators and secret police as their proxies; its presence in Saudi Arabia (ably covered by Robert Baer in Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, and of course providing billions in aid (see Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times that the Pakistani's used to create jihad with close ties to Afghan drugs, guns, and global logistics.
The author makes three key points in his conclusion:
1) USG ignores and does not publicize the thousands of acts of civil dissent, including hundreds (as many as 900) bombs a year across America;
2) The government consistently lies to the public and covers up larger group anger by claiming that major incidents are “a lone wolf” operation. This has since been proven untrue for the JFK assassination (see Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History and A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, And the Case That Should Have Changed History, and in the Oklahoma City bombing and most certainly in the 9-11 case where CHeney, Gulliani, and Silverstein and Rumsfeld are clearly more culpable than Bin Laden or the Pakistanis for the bulk of the deats (see Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory among many other books and DVDs.}
The author ends by calling the US Government, essential, a persistent liar, with hollow propaganda and specious claims that–in combination with the destruction of civil liberties–do vastly more damage to the national fabric than any small band of terrorists might. As one reviewer notes, what 19 alleged terrorists have done is nothing compared to the state terror that Bush-Cheney have unleashed on Iraq, Iran, around the world in secret renditions and secret torture, and of course here at home, where a “state of fear” and grotesque abuses of executive privilege are used to avoid justice and liberty for all, reducing both dignity and accountability.
