Milk and Honey

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
--Go Your Own Way, Fleetwood Mac

If I had a mind to
I wouldn't want to think like you
And if I had time to
I wouldn't want to talk to you
--I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You
Alan Parsons Project

In time the Rockies may tumble,
Gibralter may crumble,
They're only made of clay,
But our love is here to stay
--Our Love is Here to Stay, George Gershwin
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The press and the popular mind lump all terrorism into the same vat. Recent events in Israel demonstrate a variant, as the terrorism the Israelis must address is distinct and different from the threat facing U.S. interests.

Size matters, as does philosophy. Terrorists differ in their intent and capabilities, their organizational structure and operational methods, whether overt or covert. A terrorist differs from those who merely use terror tactics.

Terrorist operational assets are too valuable to waste. They preserve their assets, only expending their disposables. Therefore, Hamas is not a classic terrorist organization because they have a large disposable base. Hamas has evolved beyond terrorism, though they have splinter groups that are purely terroristic. Otherwise, they are a group that uses terror tactics in their unconventional war with Israel.

There is a great deal of sympathy for Hamas, the group viewed as the underdog, but the underdog is not always in the right. In the case of the U.S. versus al-Qaeda, the latter is the underdog, but we do not extend much sympathy their way.

The Hamas threat is observable, has a large popular support and has crossed over into political and military legitimacy. They are not clandestine and have stated-goals: the establishment of a new state dominated by religious fervor and aimed at the destruction of Israel.

The Israelis can address this threat either militarily, politically or in tandem, but address it they must. The threat is within homemade rocket range. While it is doubtful that such attacks could ever destroy Israel, the relentless pace of these attacks ruins life for all involved.

Terrorists do not necessarily gain anything tangible from their operations. Often their attacks are simply acts of frustration, much like the reaction of the Israeli military. Much as with al-Qaeda's 9-11 attack, a counterstrike is forced out of all proportion to the initiating event. This cyclical dance of death escalates until the mindlessness becomes institutionalized on both sides of the equation. It is a merry-go-round that doesn't require tickets.

The press coverages continues the confusion of terms when they refer to Israel's 23-day offensive as both a "war" and a "conflict". It was surely a conflict, but hardly a war. The Islamist government of Gaza vowed to acquire new rockets and other weapons, and though Eqypt and the West vowed to help keep them from this goal, how will they prevent it?

The Chicago Tribune called it a "short ferocious war with no winner," but it was not a war. It was a tactical counterstrike. That Hamas did not "lose" is a victory for them. Further, "Hamas showed again that it would eagerly sacrifice its people's lives and security in the name of its terrorist goals." However, this same observation can be made concerning legal state power.

Doesn't the U.S. sacrifice the lives of our own soldiers to bulwark security for Iraq and Afghanistan? Does the U.S. military not kill civilians in those countries to secure U.S. goals in theatre?

This is modernity. Perhaps Hobbes was right -- it is a battle of all against all. Computer hackers will always breech the best defenses of your privacy. The New York Times reported this week that food will always be adulterated with rot, mildew and maggots (The Maggots in Your Mushrooms.) Terrorists are here to stay (unless our agenda is to kill every last one of them, which is clearly an impossibility due to rising generations.)

The U.S. goes romping and stomping over two countries when they get singed by their anger, but would censure other countries for doing the same. Hypocrites. The Limbaughians have a saying: "We can be right 99% of the time; they only have to be right once." That is right, and that, sadly, is a risk one must take in order to live in liberty and freedom.

The best one can do is ramp up their protective posture through better intelligence gathering, analysis and policing. If we believe all these words about freedom and democracy, then we must abide by the rights of the newly freed Iraqis and Afghanis to be other than we might like.

They may have friends we may disprove of. They are adults, now freed from the yoke of the dictator that kept their tenuous societal balance.

When Terrorists Rule the Coop

There is no clarity if you are clear about economics
and totally unclear about the ways of your own thinking
--Jiddhu Krishnamurti

Q: How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?
A: Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one
_____________

New Middle East envoy George Mitchell can probably hootch up with Tony Blair and sandbag their windows for all the good they are going to do. Just because Mitchell thinks he knows something of Northern Ireland does not mean that knowledge can be generalized to the Hamas situation (Old Hand for an Old Mission.)

Northern Ireland could be viewed as a legitimate insurgency. Hamas is not comperable because they lack historical validity, coupled with their stated goal of obliterating their opponent, Israel. This is a different thing than the goals of the IRA, which wants England to leave Ireland and/or share power. Israel, unlike England, has no retrograde position.

While Mitchell is credited with the successful resolution to Northern Ireland's civil war in the Belfast Agreement, that is not a given. We really do not know that there has been a successful conclusion the The Troubles, nor do we know if it was a civil war. As usual, the terms are oblique.

Was Northern Ireland a civil war or a war of national liberation? Was it a war at all? Did Irish Republican Army prisoners enjoy the rights of the Geneva Convention?

In fact, IRA operatives were assassinated, tortured and jailed in somewhat barbaric fashion. They suffered the same confusion of categorization as the U.S.'s detainees: were they criminals or prisoners of war?

Was the IRA terrorist, or a legitimate unconventional asymmetric combat force? Were the British a legitimate force or a foreign occupying Army, a colonial vestige of subjugation? Or were they forces of democracy?

Point being, it is difficult to define the problems of Northern Ireland, yet it is clear that people of the same religion and culture cannot, could not and would not live side-by-side in peace. Christians whose enmity reaches back to before the Battle of the Boyne (1690) still hate one another, regardless of Mr. Mitchell's efforts.

Hamas and Israel is another case of intractable hostilities with little agreement upon terminology. Terrorist group Hamas is now legitimized in its freely elected role in the Palestinian parliament (thank you, George Bush), and has progressed through the spectrum of conflict into a military organization.

Since it represents a state, albeit a dysfunctional one, Hamas is a legitimate representative for Palestinians in Gaza. The problem is that Hamas uses terror tactics to achieve its goals, which unlike those of the IRA, are not the expulsion of the perceived occupiers, but rather, their total destruction.

The IRA does not wish to destroy England, but Hamas does wish to destroy Israel. For Israel, terrorists -- especially state-sanctioned ones like Hamas -- are an existential issue. For England, they are a political problem. For the U.S. versus al-Qaeda, it is a criminal matter.

What is clear is that Muslims, Christians and Jews will always be killing one another, in any combination thereof, and always for their God.