Cliff May really is a fool: "And had the US not toppled Saddam Hussein, these people now enlisting as terrorists would be doing what right now? Enrolling in law school, watching football games, and investing in 401K’s?"
This is just silly. Radicalization is a complicated process with multiple stages. No doubt there are lots of people, had the US not invaded Iraq, would have had more-or-less positive views of American foreign policy who are now sitting around stewing about the evils of the United States. And there are other people who, had we not invaded, would be sitting around stewing about the evils of the United States who are, instead, taking up arms against us. There are also bound to be some people who were already committed radicals who used to think the focus belonged on the "near enemy" -- Arab apostate dictatorships -- who now agree that there's a Zionist/Crusader alliance that's pulling the strings in the region and needs to be targeted.
You're talking about millions of people -- hundreds of millions, probably, if not billions -- all over the world who have each in their own way been pushed a notch or two in the direction of hostility to the United States of America. This should be obvious. Massively unpopular actions have consequences. In particular, the United States has unmatched military power. This is, potentially, something that people everywhere -- Muslims or not -- could find threatening. Insofar as we used that power in a way that others regarded as reasonable, though, nothing was likely to happen. Insofar as we've started using in ways that most people regard as utterly unreasonable and that many -- especially including Muslims in this instance -- regard as being hostile to their interests and those of their co-religionists, there's going to be a price to be paid. That includes more terrorists, more terrorist sympathizers, and fewer and fewer people interested in helping us fight the terrorists.
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Heads in the Sand
There's an obvious answer to this, in the form of the radicalised British Muslims for whom Iraq was the tipping point.
I can't remember where I read it, but someone made the point recently that there's a difference between someone who's angry at you -- perhaps someone who happily chants 'Death To America' every day -- and someone actually prepared to kill you.
The neoconservative delusion is that military force can reduce the pool of people angry with you, where at least realpolitik is based upon the premise that it's okay for people to remain angry as long as the ratio of really-pissed-off to murderously-pissed-off goes down.
Of course, the Cliff May line will be that it's a good thing those mad-as-hell types were pushed over the edge, because they can now be killed. That's like arguing that you shouldn't medicate schizophrenics because it makes it harder for the cops to shoot the ones who snap and endanger people's lives.
Posted by pseudonymous in nc | September 25, 2006 12:23 PM