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Army.ca Veteran
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Canada Clearly Hopes to Dodge the Inevitable Terrorist Bullet
The Hill Times (Ottawa)
"Canada has been fortune's favoured child; history has dealt lightly with the country. There is no citizen with a living memory of Canada being invaded. The veterans of World War II are benign grandparents or great-grandparents. There is no socio-historical equivalent of Pearl Harbor or 9/11.The appreciation of terror is an intellectual abstraction rather than a visceral wrench. Those calling "wolf" appear paranoid rather than prescient."
by David Jones
WASHINGTON, D.C.-There is a "déjàvu all over again" element to the most recent terrorist strike in London. We are short handing terror with neat abbreviations: 9/11; 3/11; 7/7.
The same tiresome talkers are talking and the same bleating blamers are blaming. Thus 7/7 London supposedly tells us that terrorism continues/will continue (and the sun has risen again and will rise tomorrow). A British official proclaims that the attack was an "intelligence failure"(but declines to say that it was the failure of a specific intelligence agency). And another observer suggests that our society is still vulnerable (find a society with the slightest pretense to democracy that is not with literally tens of thousands of sites available for calculated carnage). Be prepared (but don't be scared.) And that we need more money for...well, everything (but no one suggests that whatever amount of money spent will guarantee security, so security officials become just another group of special pleaders for a bigger pie slice).
Indeed, the commentators are as likely to blame the victims (that is blaming the society whose citizens are being blown up) as the victimizers. Thus if "we"(the non- Islamic; non-Muslim world), would only get out of everywhere an Islamic presence ever stood, but most immediately Iraq and Afghanistan (and eliminate the Jews from the Middle East while departing), we might get a respite. Or we might not.
And, naturally, the United States is responsible for all of this. For these critics, if the population of the United States committed mass suicide in contrition for its sins, they would blame us for polluting the environment.
Finally there are the "don't blame the Islamic/Muslim community" commentators . Despite the unpleasant reality that virtually every identified terrorist has come from this segment of society, we don't want even to contemplate addressing the consequences of innately hostile communities within our countries. We are desperately concerned about making our multicultural, multiracial societies "work." On the other hand, the degree to which the Islamic communities in Western democracies have cooperated against terrorism is subject to question. Saying that these communities have no association with terrorism is akin to arguing that narcotics have no links with drug abuse; that alcohol and drunken driving have no connection; and/or that owning firearms has no relationship to deaths from gunshot wounds.
The most successful counter-terrorism makes terrorism unacceptable in the community that produces the terrorists. But the Muslim/Islamic militant is not yet as communally unacceptable as driving while drunk or smoking in an upscale restaurant. The old Maoist guerrilla truism applies also to the terrorist: the terrorist is the fish that swims in the water of the population. For the United States, the 9/11 terrorists lived and operated for an extended period within the country, but nobody informed the legal authorities. Clearly there were multiple actors in London's 7/7 and a diligent professional counter-terrorism service, but still the terrorists operated beneath official attention. This circumstance is particularly troubling as it suggests a weaker commitment to the U.K. by the post 9/11 Muslim-British community living under benign circumstances than was the case for the Japanese-American community under harsher circumstances during World War II in the U.S.
There has been a certain amount of Muslim/Islamic lip-service denunciation, but little discernable beyond these limits. It is conceivable that there has been unannounced cooperation-but by definition this is unknowable. The successes of counterespionage/counter-terror operations are muted; the failures are obvious.
In our paired North American societies, Canada clearly hopes to dodge the bullet. Canadians know that they have been warned, both specifically that they are "on the list" and by intimation that their Western orientation, open society, presence in Afghanistan, recognition of Israel, etc., put them at risk. Canada has been fortune's favoured child; history has dealt lightly with the country. There is no citizen with a living memory of Canada being invaded. The veterans of World War II are benign grandparents or great-grandparents. There is no socio-historical equivalent of Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The appreciation of terror is an intellectual abstraction rather than a visceral wrench. Those calling "wolf" appear paranoid rather than prescient.
David Jones was a political counsellor at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa from 1992-96..
The Hill Times (Ottawa)
"Canada has been fortune's favoured child; history has dealt lightly with the country. There is no citizen with a living memory of Canada being invaded. The veterans of World War II are benign grandparents or great-grandparents. There is no socio-historical equivalent of Pearl Harbor or 9/11.The appreciation of terror is an intellectual abstraction rather than a visceral wrench. Those calling "wolf" appear paranoid rather than prescient."
by David Jones
WASHINGTON, D.C.-There is a "déjàvu all over again" element to the most recent terrorist strike in London. We are short handing terror with neat abbreviations: 9/11; 3/11; 7/7.
The same tiresome talkers are talking and the same bleating blamers are blaming. Thus 7/7 London supposedly tells us that terrorism continues/will continue (and the sun has risen again and will rise tomorrow). A British official proclaims that the attack was an "intelligence failure"(but declines to say that it was the failure of a specific intelligence agency). And another observer suggests that our society is still vulnerable (find a society with the slightest pretense to democracy that is not with literally tens of thousands of sites available for calculated carnage). Be prepared (but don't be scared.) And that we need more money for...well, everything (but no one suggests that whatever amount of money spent will guarantee security, so security officials become just another group of special pleaders for a bigger pie slice).
Indeed, the commentators are as likely to blame the victims (that is blaming the society whose citizens are being blown up) as the victimizers. Thus if "we"(the non- Islamic; non-Muslim world), would only get out of everywhere an Islamic presence ever stood, but most immediately Iraq and Afghanistan (and eliminate the Jews from the Middle East while departing), we might get a respite. Or we might not.
And, naturally, the United States is responsible for all of this. For these critics, if the population of the United States committed mass suicide in contrition for its sins, they would blame us for polluting the environment.
Finally there are the "don't blame the Islamic/Muslim community" commentators . Despite the unpleasant reality that virtually every identified terrorist has come from this segment of society, we don't want even to contemplate addressing the consequences of innately hostile communities within our countries. We are desperately concerned about making our multicultural, multiracial societies "work." On the other hand, the degree to which the Islamic communities in Western democracies have cooperated against terrorism is subject to question. Saying that these communities have no association with terrorism is akin to arguing that narcotics have no links with drug abuse; that alcohol and drunken driving have no connection; and/or that owning firearms has no relationship to deaths from gunshot wounds.
The most successful counter-terrorism makes terrorism unacceptable in the community that produces the terrorists. But the Muslim/Islamic militant is not yet as communally unacceptable as driving while drunk or smoking in an upscale restaurant. The old Maoist guerrilla truism applies also to the terrorist: the terrorist is the fish that swims in the water of the population. For the United States, the 9/11 terrorists lived and operated for an extended period within the country, but nobody informed the legal authorities. Clearly there were multiple actors in London's 7/7 and a diligent professional counter-terrorism service, but still the terrorists operated beneath official attention. This circumstance is particularly troubling as it suggests a weaker commitment to the U.K. by the post 9/11 Muslim-British community living under benign circumstances than was the case for the Japanese-American community under harsher circumstances during World War II in the U.S.
There has been a certain amount of Muslim/Islamic lip-service denunciation, but little discernable beyond these limits. It is conceivable that there has been unannounced cooperation-but by definition this is unknowable. The successes of counterespionage/counter-terror operations are muted; the failures are obvious.
In our paired North American societies, Canada clearly hopes to dodge the bullet. Canadians know that they have been warned, both specifically that they are "on the list" and by intimation that their Western orientation, open society, presence in Afghanistan, recognition of Israel, etc., put them at risk. Canada has been fortune's favoured child; history has dealt lightly with the country. There is no citizen with a living memory of Canada being invaded. The veterans of World War II are benign grandparents or great-grandparents. There is no socio-historical equivalent of Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The appreciation of terror is an intellectual abstraction rather than a visceral wrench. Those calling "wolf" appear paranoid rather than prescient.
David Jones was a political counsellor at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa from 1992-96..
