Making the world safe for democracy, again
Upon reading this opinion piece in the New York Times, I got to thinking–how much sense does spreading democracy really make as a means of fighting terrorism from rogue states or fanatical free agents?
(Not to mention the home-grown nuts it inspires to send faux anthrax to newspapers exercising their democratic rights.)
If you're a terrorist and you're angry at a democratic country's leadership, striking its civilians is perfectly legitimate. For as democratic rulers are so fond of proclaiming, probability holds that the majority of citizens you hit will have voted for that leadership. (Remember those elementary school math problems with the bags of red and blue marbles? How's that for applied arithmetic.)
And for the slow members of the jihadist class, America has given them a simple bicolor map to boot. And mock the vintage John Kerry stickers clinging tenaciously to their smattering of Subaru bumpers all you like, Bush/Cheney '04 gloaters, but perhaps dwindling fuel economy shouldn't be your only international petrol-politics worry.
Now, nobody is going to tell you attacking citizens in stead for their government is a morally praiseworthy thing to do (or as productive or entertaining as, say, channeling one's anti-American rage into making subversive YouTube videos). But though Dear Abby has yet to rule on the issue, it seems well within the realm of proper militant etiquette for the post-Sept. 11 world our leaders love to remind us we're living in every time they're caught seeking to restrict rights and freedoms.
Still, the fact remains that amid all this concern about combating stateless terrorists and rewriting the old "laws of war," a little-mentioned side effect of spreading democracy is that more people are brought to share in the violence.
From a purely tactical, preventive standpoint not colored by practical, economic or ideological concerns, we should be implanting systems with leadership as concentrated as possible, at least in figurehead form. That way, the boys with the guns can play their games with a series of jolly little coups and counter-coups for the official leadership posts while leaving life for the rest of us in relative peace, security and, you know, aliveness.
Just a thought. And as George Carlin might say, one that demonstrates succinctly why I'm spending my Saturday night alone.
But at least now we know why all those Mule Day Parades and lame community attractions might have been on last week's much-mocked state terrorism target list: high concentrations of red marbles.
(Not to mention the home-grown nuts it inspires to send faux anthrax to newspapers exercising their democratic rights.)
If you're a terrorist and you're angry at a democratic country's leadership, striking its civilians is perfectly legitimate. For as democratic rulers are so fond of proclaiming, probability holds that the majority of citizens you hit will have voted for that leadership. (Remember those elementary school math problems with the bags of red and blue marbles? How's that for applied arithmetic.)
And for the slow members of the jihadist class, America has given them a simple bicolor map to boot. And mock the vintage John Kerry stickers clinging tenaciously to their smattering of Subaru bumpers all you like, Bush/Cheney '04 gloaters, but perhaps dwindling fuel economy shouldn't be your only international petrol-politics worry.
Now, nobody is going to tell you attacking citizens in stead for their government is a morally praiseworthy thing to do (or as productive or entertaining as, say, channeling one's anti-American rage into making subversive YouTube videos). But though Dear Abby has yet to rule on the issue, it seems well within the realm of proper militant etiquette for the post-Sept. 11 world our leaders love to remind us we're living in every time they're caught seeking to restrict rights and freedoms.
Still, the fact remains that amid all this concern about combating stateless terrorists and rewriting the old "laws of war," a little-mentioned side effect of spreading democracy is that more people are brought to share in the violence.
From a purely tactical, preventive standpoint not colored by practical, economic or ideological concerns, we should be implanting systems with leadership as concentrated as possible, at least in figurehead form. That way, the boys with the guns can play their games with a series of jolly little coups and counter-coups for the official leadership posts while leaving life for the rest of us in relative peace, security and, you know, aliveness.
Just a thought. And as George Carlin might say, one that demonstrates succinctly why I'm spending my Saturday night alone.
But at least now we know why all those Mule Day Parades and lame community attractions might have been on last week's much-mocked state terrorism target list: high concentrations of red marbles.
posted by Holly at 12:45 AM
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