Terrorism is the only viable method of struggle small and poor have against the big and wealthy. No country in the world can parry the US count of nuclear missiles, and God alone knows, if even He, what else is stashed somewhere.
Yet, it's a fact that the US will not behave the same way with those that do not have nuclear weapons and those that do. This in itself is rather telltale, and helps us understand why the West, and the US in particular, are so dead opposed to nuclear weapons proliferation (beside the obvious fact that there are those in whose hands they would indeed be serious threats). All of a sudden, it has been forgotten that possession of nuclear weapons is a mighty deterrant, as it was during the Cold War.
As for England, as one who has lived there some years, I am naturally more attached to the country than an average person, but I cannot close my eyes to self-evident facts. Nobody like T. Blair and the UK followed US lead into ventures of highly doubtful quality and outcome. When the US took gunboat diplomacy to a new and higher level, only England followed without question. If 9/11 happened in NYC (which, BTW, unlike many others I happen to like a lot), it had to happen in London as well, sooner or later; if one is cruisading, one cannot afford to overlook the followers of the leader.
There's an old Persian (Iranian) proverb, which goes like this: there are three Statans. The small one is Israel, the big one is the US and the old one is England. Says a lot, doesn't it?
US policy, and by extension the UK policy as well, are ruled by a totally stupid premise that you can bomb the hell out of somebody, occupy his territory, and then introduce "democracy" by sheer weight of arms. This has never happened, and it never will.
Look at the results, particularly evident in my ex-country, Yugoslavia. The war in Bosnia solved nothing, it never could solve anything as we who live here know all too well, it was just the usual, sadly typical, Balkan cycle all over again. In WW2, Bosnian muslims sided with the Germans, they even had an all muslim SS division, believe it or not, called "Handjar" (a Turkish curved broadsword). They decimated local Bosnian Serbs, including my own family. Tito and his communist forgave them, nobody was prosecuted (well, 3-4 people were. but that's it). Croatians also sided with the Germans, created a hellhole called Jasenovac, which swallowed some 600,000 Serbs, about 40,000 Jews, and about 30,000 Romas (Gypsies) with such depravtity that even official SS records show the SS men to be appaled. They too got away with it, Tito forgave them as well, all because he wanted to be the king of the big hill.
When the old country broke up, old wounds opened. When the US ambassador told the muslim leader Izetbegovic that he didn't have to sign the peace treaty brokered by the EU, which would have avoided war in Bosnia, all hell broke loose. And it was way different to what the average Western newspaper reader was told. CNN never showed footage of muslim torturing Serbs, only to eventually behead them and play football with their heads - but this footage exists. It does not justify any other crime, to be sure, but the point is, you were told exactly what you had to be told to justify use of force to turn the tide of the war. As NATO did.
I won't even mention Kosovo, which is a story unto itself. Remember the "over 100,000" victims in mass graves? Only three mass graves were found, the worst containing 42 bodies, which in the end turned out to be local Serbs, so that story was killed quickly.
NATO goes into Bosnia - what happens? Nothing, it's still as divided as it ever was, if not more. Its chances of ever coming together are practically nil.
NATO went to Kosovo - what happened? Nothing, it was a serious crime den, specializing in drugs from Turkey (another trusty US ally), slave trade and weapons contraband. The local cops had it under some control, but after NATO came in, it's gone completely out of control. Since it's "liberation", Kosovo has become Europe's No.1 supplier of drugs and prostitutes. And it has all but completed its ethnic cleansing, a project of Great Albania which has been in progress since the 19th century. It's come to the point where they are blackmailing NATO and the West, saying the next turn of violence will be far worse than ever before.
Afghanistan is no different - drugs are still their No. 1 export item. Iraq is no different, although I imagine the US controls most of its oil. When the US was about to go to war, on this forum I said it would turn out to be a long, exhausting war, eventually much like Vietnam - and was called names by a few. Oddly enough, I don't hear from them much these days, while the US death toll continues to rise. And time is on their side.
Introducing "democracy" with weapons and armies will never introduce anything else but more violence and death. And eventually, it will shift, eventually the battleground will go elsewhere, as it has in NYC on 9/11, Madrid this march and now London. And this not the end, no, it's just the beginning. Unfortunately.
I worry about a few folks I know from Down Under. So far, nothing has happened there, but it's only a matter of time. Australia's low exposure simply means that it is low on the list of primary targets, but rest assured it's on the list.
What other choice is there for those who fight US plans? They don't have the resources, nor the organization, nor the logistics of a classic army. They cannot face anyone in an out-and-out classic battlefield battle. They cannot afford any of the high tech weapons. The best they can do is manage a "poor man's A bomb", a vial of biological weaponry stolen somewhere, some Semtex to blow something up, and so forth. And their plan is obvious - take the fight to the opponent's back yard. Make him learn how it feels. Make him have a taste of his own medicine.
Looked at like that, NYC, Madrid and London are no surprises. The only question is - who's next? They will not stop.
This will in turn cause new lines to be drawn. As Raj has pointed out, it has already started. And it will get worse, because the spiral of violence tends to rise, never to fall. Innocents will be hurt, causing more hate. The tempo will increase. In say 10 years' time, I think the US will be a hermetically sealed country. What that will do to its global position is hard to know, but whatever it is, it won't be good.
Cheers,
DVV
