Re[4]: [at-l] Cold Questions [OFF-TOPIC]

[brian@patriot.net (Brian C Merrell)]

On Tue, 8 Jan 2002, Jim and/or Ginny Owen wrote:

[...]
> They fail to realize that this is not about oil or the Palestinians or
> foreign policy - it's a "spiritual" war with very definite "physical"
> consequences.  Death is still physical isn't it?  "Jihad" is not about oil -
> it's not about "kings" - it's not about the Palestinians - it isn't even
> (theoretically) about political power.  It IS the result of radical
> religious fanaticism.  And it WILL kill you (yes, YOU - personally) if given
[...]

Interesting to see that people actually pick up on this.  One of the scary
points about the Taliban/Al Quada is that this was not about political
power, and that is what made it so dangerous.

For the past few hundred years of the modern era (post-1500), the more
advanced nations (both in the east and west) have operated on an implicit
power system, where the goal was NOT to obliterate the enemy, sell the
survivors into slavery, and take their land, never to see that nation rise
again; instead, it's been to simply adjust the relative balance of power,
for better or worse.  This has had the effect of forcing nations to use
"unlimited" force (not as in nukes, but as in will to dedicate
conventional forces) but with limited aims. (read a little von Clausewitz
for more on this)

What makes it bad here is that the "enemy" does not operate in the same
power system, and has "unlimited" aims, whose effects and use of force are
only limited by capacity.  With will to use unlimited force without the
restraint of limited aims, there is the very clear and present danger of
the use of non-conventional and catastrophic weapons.  Because (to the
enemy at least) this is a religious issue (as opposed to merely a
political, economic, or purely defense issue) they measure goals and
success in absolute terms; that is, the annihilation of any who are not
faithful to their beliefs.  This lets them justify the use of Really Bad
Things, like biological and nuclear weapons. (Chemical weapons are
actually very limited in their effectiveness and persistence)

Sorry, I'm a college student (Philosophy & Computer Science) who is taking
a lot of history classes, I just had to pipe up.

> 3/ Your political "mini-zingers" consistently set off semantic alarms
> because they fail to fit the flow, the sense or the subject of your posts.
> And some of them are sheer nonsense. I've seen them as flame bait - so have
> others.

Large scale, foreign policy related politics on a hiking list seems
incredibly out of place -- note my [OFF-TOPIC] addition to the subject
line.  I just chimed in because I was intrigued by the observation made
earlier.

[...]

I think perhaps the issue should be taken off list.  There are plenty of
valid forums for it.

-brian

-- 
Brian C. Merrell               | "All that glitters is not gold,
brian@patriot.net              |  All who wander are not lost."
ICBM address: 38.845 N, 77.3 W |                -J.R.R. Tolkien