In the name of The Decider
I know that it's old news, that Bush has given himself and the government an obscene amount of power, when it comes to dealing with suspected terrorists. However last night I was watching In the Name of the Father. It's about 6 Irishmen wrongly accused of a 1974 IRA bombing. If you haven't seen it I highly recommend it.
In our current national state, I find it has new meaning for me. You see the UK has had a problem with terrorist organizations too. They too have not been able to win the battle. They used the same tactics we use now (days long interigation of terror suspects, the use of psychological torture and military envasion of high terror areas). My point being, is we should learn from our Allies in the UK and learn that this strategy didn't work and in the case of the 1974 bombing at least 6 people were wrongly imprissoned for the crime. These tactics didn't make the UK any safer and I would argue it escalated the problem to some degree. However what has worked the best in recent years is continued peace-talks, comprimises and other non-military action.
I sure wish Mr. Bush would take the time to study historical responses to terror. I wish he had a better understanding of what was effective in these situations and what was not. More importantly, I wish that we as a people were knowledgable of the history of various governments responses to terror. Unlike Mr. Bush claims, this is not a new type of war. It maybe a new type of war to us, but most of the world has dealt with terrorist threats before. Perhaps if we as a people were more knowledgable about these issues, we would not stand for irresponsible action taken by our government.
Ps: This is my first political post. Please be kind to me.
posted by Monticore @ 7:34 PM
6 Comments:
Georgie has a degree in History from Yale. I think he knows what he is doing.
In all seriousness though, he has two choices. Keep going in the same direction until he's out of office and let someone else deal with it, or suck it up, admit his faults and start fixing things. But he can't take option number two because the paradigm he and his administration lives in is designed around the idea that anything but strong action against terrorism will in actuality make terrorism worse. Which is where you get the "stay the course" and "the Dems just want to cut and run" garbage. If we don't keep killing people, the terrorists will have won.
But Dude, it just make me think to these public figures ever talk? Like when Bush was going to invade iraq couldn't have Tony Blair taken him aside and showed him the great job they did in ireland.
i've read some interesting commentary pieces about the situation in israel, basically talking about how in that situation almost nothing has worked. army strikes, embiggens terrorists (yeah, that's right, i used jeremiah springfield's word. jealous?)
peaceful withdrawl, makes the terrorists feel like they're winning.
not quite the same situation in iraq, but something to add to it.
Ed- Interesting, so then I ask, if army strikes don't necessarily work better than peaceful withdrawal, why not go for the option that doesn't kill innocent people at the hands of the government.
Because our government doesn't value those innocent people, no matter how much they may claim to.
Adam- Maybe it's not that the government doesn't "care about the innocent" maybe it's just that using force and military action makes you feel better, like you are actually combating a problem (even if it's not effective.)
I mean in my mind I know that talking out a dispute peacefully is doing something but, there is something just so...hmm.... satisfying about using physical force to get you point across. Just another flaw in our design I guess.
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