Jeez you're a pessimist Dejan! 
A pessimist is an optimist with experience.
That's EXACTLY what I was told when the Iraq war started. I'm sad to say that it was I who was right, not the optimists.
And I am not a pessimist, nor do I think of myself as an optimist, I try to be a realist. I try.
Perhaps it would be better if we were all transported back 100 years when there was a lot of "pink" on the world map and Britain had its Empire!
It seems to me that many of the world's troublespots are the result of bad "partitions" at the end of this Empire ... would Africa be the basket case it is now if most of it was still under Colonial rule? (And, remember, Britain created "Palestine"!) I wonder!
And I don't agree with you that terorism is solely "small a ...
Andy, the difference between you and many others like you and myself (possibly some others here too) was that you never were and I was for 79 days the beneficiary of democracy delivered to my doorstep from 15,000 feet above me. You'd be surprised how that changes your points of view.
Especially when you grab your only child and run him off not to school, where he should have been, but to an air raid shelter.
As you can imagine, it absolutely breeds one's love for western democracy and NATO.
I never said terrorism was limited only to the small and poor; for example, the Bader-Meinhof group in Germany in the late 60-ies was completely home-grown, a product of the rapidly expanding German industry. That dimwitted dodo who blew up a federal building some years ago in the US was also a home grown product.
What I did say was that terrorism was the ONLY resort the small and weak have to strike back against the big and mighty. They have no other viable option. They need to be effective because they know their chances of accomplishing it are very low anyway, and hoping for a second chance is absurd without at least 4-5 years passing by. So, they need to make it work, and they need to make it effective. They need to strike terror into the hearts of as amny as they can. Hence the Twin Towers, hence Madrid, hence London.
If you ask whether I agree with it or not, the answer is simple - of course not, I don't think anybody half sane could ever agree with any form of terrorism. But then, terrorism, as practically anything in this world, also has many forms; for example, there's such a thing as state terrorism, which to me is just as worthy of condemnation and individual terrorism by smaller groups. If not more.
I think it's a form of terrorism when I am interviewed by city, republic and federal cops in 1975 and 1976, who wonder how can I, an economist by profession, be a free lancer in a "socialist" (communist) society? True, I was not mistreated, I was not jailed, I was not beaten, but I was harassed fro two years (despite everything, ex-Yugoslavia was far more liberal than any other communist country of the day). Then, in 1988, I get harassed again, this time with more pressure but still without physical threat, because I am working as a local associate of the World Bank.
When the breakup began, in 1992, I am black listed by ex-Yugoslav republics. Why? Because I am investigating crimes against ethnic Serbs in Croatia. Asking why were 60+ year old peasants tortured, dismembered, ears and noses cut off, throats slit and murdered by mallets. After two years, that was the first case the International tribunal from the Hague simply could not ignore any more and had to open; God knows they did everything they could not to. But despite threats to my wife and son, with my wife's support, I didn't give up, I didn't stop, in fact, I accelerated. The things I learnt and could prove kept me alive.
Andy, I have seen with my own two eyes more blood and gore resulting from various forms of terrorism than probably the sum total of all members here. That's why my views may be a little hard to understand; when the smell of blood is once in your nostrills, you NEVER forget it. You learn once and for all what death really means.
The only thing I never managed to learn, probably because I just don't have what it takes in me, is how to hate. I could write pages explaining the numerous reasons I could use to hate, but there's no point, because I still don't hate anybody. I "hate" only hate, because it reduces people from thinking creatures to bloodthirsty monsters, but I have seen it far too many times not to be aware of what comes next with those who adopt the Dark Side Of The Force. George Lucas is no fool, he knows what he's talking about, even if he's a little poetic and cinematic about it.
Hate is the most powerful weapon on earth, far transcending all nuclear devices rolled into one, believe me. I don't know about love, but I do know hate can move mountains, with explosives if need be. Start breeding it, underestimate it as the US have and are doing, and you will have terrorism as the articulation of that hate. Just as the hate on which it is founded is blind, so is terrorism blind. Unfortunately, it is blind to the victims, but not to its own articulation, which can be very coordinated, planned in great detail and executed immaculately. Precisely what makes it so dangerous.
And being from the Balkans, believe me, nobody knows hate as well as we do here. We have had it here for centuries, and no US, NATO or whosever's intervention will change one iota of it. Countries here have been composed, decomposed and recomposed for centuries, and old enemies will stay enemies no matter what. It's gone down into the genes. The West will regret ever taking any part in all this even in the Balkans, let alone the Middle East, and the muslim question.
All of which translates into more bombs, more sirens wailing, more blood, more gore, more misery. Mark my words. How do you fight an enemy who has no regard whatsoever for his own life? How do you scare off a man who has decided he has nothing left to lose? How do you fight an enemy within, home grown muslims gone terrorist? How do you thwart an agenda encompassing the whole globe, organized around the globe, which, like corporations, thinks globally and acts locallly? All the while keeping its greatest progentor, Saudi Arabia, near to your bosom as your most trusted ally? Keeping silent on their observing of human rights, by cutting off the arms of thieves, public whippings and stonigs, public beheadings?
Who then breeds terrorism? Remember, doing nothing is silent approval.
Cheers,
DVV
