No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

Terrorism versus Nonviolent Resistance

This is from Charles Peters of the Washington Monthly.

Wrong targets

Buried in a recent Maureen Dowd column is a good point by former Sen. Bob Kerrey. He said that once 9/11 happened, our target should have been Osama bin Laden, not terrorism in general. "To declare war on terrorism would seem to me to have the wrong target. It would be like after the 7th of December 1941, declaring war on Japanese planes. We declared war on Japan. We didn't declare war on their tactic. Terrorism is a tactic."

Colonial terrorists

Kerrey might have added that, by making terrorism the enemy instead of al Qaeda, we took on an immensely complicated--should we war on the Chechens?--and ever-shifting target. One man's terrorist is another man's patriot. In the 18th century we were terrorists to the British, as were the Israelis to the British in the 1940s, and the Palestinians to the Israelis today.

[My note: there is also the major problem that terrorism has been with us forever, under different names. In the Peninsular Wars against Napoleon it gained the Spanish name "Guerilla War." When President McKinley was assasinated, it was by an "Anarchist." A war against terrorism will never end. There is no way to determine that you have won.]

Mahatma Arafat

This doesn't mean I'm a big fan of terrorism. I was happy to see a report in The New York Times by our alumnus, James Bennet, that some Palestinians are using peaceful demonstrations to protest against the wall. I've long felt that non-violent resistance would be the Palestinians' best tactic. Jewish guilt could get them more than terrorist bombs.

It's not a slam dunk, however. "In advocating civil disobedience," writes Bennet, "Gandhi and Martin Luther King had a bedrock faith in the essential humanity of their oppressors." It is, unfortunately, a faith that Arab extremists do not possess, and that Israeli right-wingers have not earned.

[My note 2: The Marine reaction to the killings in Fallujah, invasion of the city, amounts to state-supported terrorism. Some very organized terrorists planned and executed the klling fo the four security men there. The Marines are now attacking the entire city for not catching those people and turing them over. It is not likely to build trust in the Marines or the Americans. Nor is it likely to catch the terrorist cell that conducted the killings.

The real question is whether it advances the war against terrorists in Iraq, or if it causes more terrorism. It is the approach the Israelis used in Lebanon. It didn't work for the Israelis there. Why should it work for us in Iraq?]

[My note 3: No, I don't have another solution. My first reaction to the killing of the four American security men in Fallujah was that we should go in with bulldozers and level the city, leaving the denizens to live in refugee centers if they could find them. Then I cooled down a little, and decided that wouldn't do any good at all. It wouldn't even make me feel much better for long.

The question is, what WILL work? Both for us and for the Iraqis?]

posted by Richard at 5:55 AM