---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Subject: RE: globalization of fear
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 22:13:56 +0100
From: "pchaston" <pchaston@supanet.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Brian D Williams
> Sent: 14 August 2002 19:28
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: Re: globalization of fear
>
> >From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
> >
> >Brian D Williams wrote:
> >>>From: Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org>
> >>>What is the hard answer to a nuked Manhattan?
> >>
> >> A Mega-nuked Mecca.
> >
> >That is absolutely unacceptable.
>
> So is a nuked Manhattan.
Is it not more worrying that so many have accepted a militarisation of
foreign policy through the adoption of the "war on terror"? Reading the many
responses on this thread, there appears to be a visceral indulgence in the
political and military possibilities that this vision brings on the part of
some or a wholesale rejection of these actions on the part of others.
But the subject line of the thread is misleading. There is no globalisation
of fear since the phrase, "war on terror" had (at least) two meanings:
actions against terrorists who struck at the targets of the United States or
its Western Allies; and, a war to ensure that Americans would not feel
terror in their own land. This thread is about the terror that respondents
on this list who live in the United States fear and their political
responses to that threat.
However, a response that includes turning Islam into the 'other' by picking
out certain themes and events that you find disagreeable in these countries,
this culture, this religion and selecting them as the traits of an enemy, is
counterproductive. Moreover, it is easy and lazy, because you do not have to
think about whether certain actions are acceptable.
I know that it is easy as it is often the gut reaction of Westerners to
these cultures. If you watch "One Day in September", the documentary about
the terrorists at the Munich Olympics, you come away applauding the Isrealis
for having wiped these scum of the face of the earth, after the Germans let
them go. You feel horrified at the contemporary feel of Arabs parading
coffins through the streets in Libya in 1972 and celebrating the deaths of
martyrs, even though they had the blood of innocent civilians on their
hands. These people hold values that are morally and politically perverted.
But war will not change this, not unless you physically conquer these
countries, like Nazi Germany, and use defeat and poltical rule to
restructure their cultures.
You must find those elements of the Islamic cultures that are pro-Western,
strengthen them, and ensure that they prevail in an Muslim Kulturkampf. It
is a battle of 'hearts and minds'. If this is not done, we will face the
same problem in the next generation.
Philip Chaston
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