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well stevo, i think the argument would be that your way of interpreting "terrorism" offers no space of solutions.
it is not about solutions.
it is about justifying any and all implications of the choices made by this administration, as if this administrations response to 9/11 and thereafter was the only possible.
at the small level, the problem in this thread is that you started it without any reference whatsoever to debates that had been happening all around it on the same topic--you seem to have decided to adopt the shampoo bottle approach--lather rinse repeat--to political debate.
but every last objection raised in other threads about the contemporary usage of the notion of terrorism applies to this thread.
that you chose to cut this one off from those debates changes nothing--strangely you were involved in these debates as well, so it is not like you do not know about them.
after all that, you revert to "how do 'we' understand 'irrational people'" as if that is an adequate characterization of anything. i do not know what psychological need you see being filled by such a view, but it must be powerful for you.
and you offer nothing as a reponse to the racist character of the line that you are defending. but it does not and will not go away simply because you do not want to look at it. but then again, i know very few bigots who understand themselves as bigots...it is always about fear of some outside force that threatens.
you are not interested in debating the question of terrorism, how to think about it, how one might imagine policy that could deal with it--you are simply rehearsing the logic of the bush administration, ruling objections out if they stray, approving if they conform. it is like listening to limbaugh without the screeners. is this how conservative discussion goes routinely? the only admissable options are ones that agree with you up front?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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