IP: LA Times: The Lessons of Blowback

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Sender: rberger () imap ultradevices com
> Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 11:01:04 -0700
> From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ultradevices com>
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-000078169sep30.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dsuncomment
>
> The Lessons of Blowback
> September 30, 2001
>
> Even carefully planned actions can have unintended consequences. Let's not
> do something that ultimately benefits terrorists.
>
> By CHALMERS JOHNSON, Chalmers Johnson is author of "Revolutionary Change"
> and "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire."
>
> SAN DIEGO -- One of the objectives of terrorism is to provoke the ruling
> elites of a target regime into disastrous overreaction. When it works, as it
> has in Israel over the past year, the results can be devastating for all
> sides. Who does this ultimately benefit? The terrorists.
>
> Carlos Marighella, the Brazilian guerrilla leader whose writings influenced
> political terrorists in the 1960s and 1970s, explained why. If the
> government can be provoked into a military response to terrorism, he wrote,
> this will alienate the masses, causing them to "revolt against the army and
> the police and blame them for this state of things."
>
> The overreaction doesn't necessarily have to alienate only domestic
> "masses." If we inflict great misery on innocent people in the Middle East,
> there will almost certainly be what the CIA refers to as
> "blowback"--unintended negative consequences of our actions. Vacillating
> supporters of the terrorists might be drawn into committing terrorist acts.
> Moderate governments throughout the Islamic world, especially in Saudi
> Arabia and Pakistan, would almost certainly face growing internal dissent
> and could even be overthrown. Perhaps the prime example of terrorism
> succeeding is the Philippeville massacre of Aug. 20, 1955, in which Algerian
> revolutionaries killed 123 French colonials. A conscious act of terrorism
> carried out by revolutionaries who until then had enjoyed only slight
> popular backing, the Philippeville massacre led to a massive and bloody
> retaliation by the French. It also converted a leading French reformer
> (Jacques Soustelle, then governor-general of Algeria) into an advocate of
> suppression. The French crackdown eliminated most of the moderates on the
> Muslim side and caused influential French citizens back home to turn against
> their country's policies. This chain of events ultimately provoked a French
> army mutiny, brought Gen. Charles de Gaulle back to power as the savior of
> the nation and caused a French withdrawal from Algeria. Franco-Algerian
> relations are still strained today.
>
> No political cause can justify the killing on Sept. 11 of thousands of
> innocent people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But neither would
> our killing innocent people in retaliation be justifiable. Terrorists attack
> the vulnerable because their intended targets (the military might of a rich
> country) are inaccessible. By attacking the innocent, terrorists intend to
> draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. Like the anarchism of the
> 19th century, terrorism is propaganda by deed.
>
> <snip>
>
>
>
> --
> Robert J. Berger - UltraDevices, Inc.
> 257 Castro Street, Suite 223 Mt. View CA. 94041
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