The shocking Super Terror Tuesday in the United States should now force the international community to wake up to the enormity of the challenge the modern world faces from international terrorism. [...] Few approaches other than terrorism give its practitioners the choice of time and location to spring the surprise. Democracies are specially vulnerable to terrorism, given their justified reluctance to curb the freedoms of their citizens and the built- in opposition to draconian methods in countering terrorism.
Nothing like having your own marketing hype fed back to you in a truly disgusting and distasteful way. "Super Terror Tuesday", indeed.
It'll be interesting to see how reluctant the government is to curb freedoms ... and how reluctant we are to accept it.
That said, it's remarkable how much of the rhetoric from different countries is almost identical. China, of all places, talks about waging all-out war on terrorism. A country subject to notably little international terrorism.
Lebanon's Daily Star notes that, as a consequence of the actions, Hizbollah will need to lay low, because the US will be notably disinclined to restrain Israel from anything they wish to do over the next few months. (Frankly, I suspect that's more of a wishful thought than a prediction.) They also note that even if Hizbollah does lay low, Israel may take the opportunity to clean house, as it were, and the probable US response would be something like, "Oh, you killed a few thousand Palestinians? And they weren't all guerillas? Oh. Too bad. So sad."
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!