'Terror and Consent' (continued)

Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century

The Wars against Terror don't resemble the World Wars of the 20th century, but they do "look very like the kind of wars that have been characteristic of most of human history." (p.157, quoting Chris Brown)

Post-9/11: "We are at war no less than when a conventional state surprised the U.S. with an attack in 1941, and we have been attacked now for much the same reason. Now, as then, the U.S. aroused fear that its global presence could threaten the ambitions of a messianic movements that only wanted a free hand in their drive for regional subjugation and dominance. Then as now we face a long and bitter struggle. We should make no mistake: this is war." (p.177)

"Consider the October 2001 invasion of Aghanistan. Are we better off now than we were the day before we intervened? Probably not.... "[W]hat will be true of the U.S. and the U.K., should they develop along market state lines, will also be true of al Qaeda.... They, too, will employ self-financing operations, rely on coalitions of the willing, and seek preclusive victories." (p.214)

"There are a number of fundamental and mistaken assumptions about the ends and means of terrorist violence....
    "* The belief that terrorism is ... only about means and not ends, and ... that one cannot ... discriminate between the use of violence to deter violence and the use of violence to deter lawful activity.
    "* [the belief] that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'....
    "* [T]he inability to imagine that theatrical violence in its hands of al Qaeda ... can be an end in itself.
    "* The conclusion that violence that inevitably harms civilians ... amounts to no more than terrorism in different hands." (p.351)

"Terrorism is the pursuit of political goals through the use of violence against noncombtants in order to dissuade them from doing what they have a lawful right to do." (p.352)

"Terror can be an end in itself.... In the case of al Qaeda, the goal of the terror network is the destruction of Western values in any area where these can have an impact on Muslims. Rendering persons too frightened to act lawfully on their basic values is both an end and a means, for such a situation of terror ... is roughly equivalent to the total destruction of Western values." (p.357)

In Spain after the Madrid train bombings, "Terrorism had become the extension of diplomacy by other means, and, regrettably, it had succeeded.... It was a sickening day for democracy, made more so by the jubilation of those candidates" who were thereby elected to office. (p.395)

"It is because America is so very vulnerable and at the same time so ubiquitously and overwhelmingly powerful that twenty-first century global terrorism has arisen. In this sense, the U.S. is [terrorism's] root cause, and this would remain true even if American policies vis-a-vis Israel or Iraq or Iran changed." (p.400)

Of the "Bush Doctrine" as articulated in the 2002 National Security Strategy: "There is a good deal of sense in the proscriptive, anticipatory elements, though they are wildly controversial at present....
    "Prescriptively, the Bush Doctrine asserts the need to reform the political societies of the world by introducing democracy and the recognition of human rights where these are currently suppressed, especially in the Middle East. By contrast, there is a good deal of support for [this] proposition....
    "The difficulty with the Bush Doctrine is that the prescription (advance democracy ...) and the proscription (states that threaten the U.S. ... render themselves vulnerable to American intervention) are not entirely in synch with each other." (p.433)

"Polling in many countries allied with the U.S. ... indicates that free and fair elections would bring the most violent anti-Western elements to power." (p.436)

The Bush Doctrine "is not a doctrine at all. It tells us what we might do ... but not ... on what basis we should act. It tells us what we are seeking ... but not what we plan to do to bring this about." (p. 439)

"We are entering an era of turbulent and even dangerous change, such has occurred less than half a dozen times in the last five centuries." (i.e., when new forms of the constitutional state have arisen) (p.440)

Detention of terrorists and enemy combatants: "Why didn't the U.S. government simply decide what sort of rules it thought appropriate, propose these as amendments to the Geneva Conventions, and obey them in the meantime?... Why didn't the human rights community acknowledge that the old rules are not really meant for the present situation ... and propose new rules?" (p.464)

"It is already the case ... that smallpox DNA can be ordered through the mail, sequenced with publicly available technology, and weaponized by infecting a willing squad of suicide bombers." Ten such agents could infect 2.2 million people in 180 days. (p.476)

"I offer this provocative proposed rule: a state of terror can never be sovereign.... Persons within a state of terror may prosecute armed struggle against the State [without being considered terrorists].... Other states may lawfully intervene against such a state to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, genocide, or international terrorism, or to forestall mass human catastrophes ignored by the regime--all indicia of states of terror." (p.482)

"If U.S. allies like France and Germany had wished the Iraqi project to succeed, there is much they could have done.... That instead every step was taken to delegitimize the Coalition presence implies that some states ... are willing to sacrifice human rights, antiproliferation, and democratization projects like Iraq in order to frustrate the U.S." (p.489)

"The dominance of the nation state ... will slowly ebb until ... its legitimacy collapses. It is our task to manage this transition, knowing that in the past such transitions have been accompanied by the great violence of epochal wars, often begun by civil wars such as the civil war now raging within Islam." (p.518)

"It is the U.S., our global presence, our overwhelming armed power, and our example, as one of the first emerging market states, that is the principal driver behind this new form of terrorism. Those who oppose the United States ... confront an adversary they cannot attack by traditional military means...." (p.525)

"There is something slightly contemptible about the wish to detach one's country from any member of the alliance that has been threatened or stricken in order to concilate Islamic terrorists." (p.536)

"We may think that it is the United States that today disturbs [our world's] tranquility because we measure our anxiety against the most peaceful recent past. We should instead measure our states against the alternative future of a world without the global but benign ambitions of America." (p.538)

"When we finally determine to take up the Wars against Terror in earnest, we will face a threat to mankind that is unprecedented and is potentially measureless in its tragedy." (p.547)