FÍSICA E METAFÍSICA

The World Trade Center Bombing - What Now?

por Sergio Coutinho de Biasi

First of all, the United States should resist at all cost the temptation
of bombing random locations in any country. That would only bring more
innocent people dying and suffering, more hate, and maybe even more
terrorist attacks. It certainly wouldn't bring LESS terrorist attacks,
because those are not the random work of insane psychopaths, but desperate
acts of people with an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness when faced
with what they perceive as intolerable injustice and evil. Bombing their
cities and killing their families doesn't seem the best way to make them
feel less desperate. The problem is that after a certain stage, trying to
scare them away or "break their will" is pointless; when people have
already lost most of what they value or care about, you can't scare them
with threats or even real violence and cruelty anymore. That would only
strengthen their resolve. Those people feel like "la resistance" in World
War II France, fighting a mighty enemy with whatever weapons they have.

Consider, for example, the four hijacked planes. How could four or five
people armed only with razors or something similar intimidate forty or
fifty people? That's possible because the forty or fifty people had a lot
to lose; above all, they didn't want to die. But at the fourth plane, when
they found out that they were going to die anyway, they decided to stop the
terrorists even if at the price of klling themselves.

What I am trying to say is that people who have nothing to lose are an
unconquerable enemy. So, unless the plan is to kill them all (which, last
time I checked, was called genocide and is supposed to be bad, although
universally tried anyway), the situation will NOT improve if any place is
bombed back into the stone age. On the contrary, it's necessary to give
those people hope; they miss very basic things like a home which won't be
bombed, plundered or invaded periodically.

But short of leveling some places with nuclear bombs (the "kill them
all" solution), what else is there to do? Supporting crazy rebels is absurd
and helped to create this situation in the first place. Sending "special
forces" to "help eradicate the terrorists" is almost certain to create
another Vietnam, with similar results. Sending a full military assault to
invade might seem tempting, but consider what happened to the USSR when
they tried to invade Afghanistan... consider what's happening to them in
Chechnya... and those places are on their borders, not thousands of miles away!

So, for the "What now?" question, I am forced to conclude that any
solution will NOT come from the irrational use of force, but from a sincere
attempt to ease the suffering of those people. Even if it means IMPOSING a
solution by force (as it happened in Japan after World War II), the
solution must be sincerely crafted to bring peace and prosperity to the
people involved. It's pathetic how Israel does whatever it wants while the
USA and the UN whine about it and are ignored but still supply enormous
military support to them. It should not be a surprise that the palestinians
get furious at the USA. Maybe the time has come for the USA (and the UN) to
stop childishly begging Israel and the palestianians to "please behave" and
"please negotiate" and simply FORCE a peace plan ON BOTH SIDES. Send lots
of troops there and say STOP. Prevent, by force if necessary, Israel from
bulldozing and invading palestinian territory. And do the same to protect
Israel from palestinian attacks. This would require lots of courage and
determination, but would have the merit of being be a mission to SAVE human
lives instead of one to take them for revenge. And that would be an action
which would address one of the main CAUSES of the problem, not it's
collateral manifestations. Today it may be Bin Laden, tomorrow it will be
someone else. Just killing or capturing him or many others solves nothing.

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