Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

I admit Baudrillard isn't specific in his reference to "we." But his aim is not to delineate the oversimplistic binary opposition that plagues such ideas as America and Islam, globalization and terrorism. Instead, he attempts to shatter the facade placed on them by the "New World Order" by pointing out the futility of the attempts to fetishize or commoditize them. Terrorism is a concept, an idea, not something you can pinpoint. It is too far removed from the realm of the practical that you cannot target it in a war, especially when that thing you assume to be "war" is no longer within that realm either.

He points out that terrorism (and terrorists) isn't something you do (or be); rather, it is a cultural response to power. You can no sooner have a supposed war against terror than you can a war against poverty, as both of these things are responses to social and cultural conditions and therefore cannot be pinpointed to a single cause or response. They are so far removed from real conditions that we can no longer trace back to their cause (or, perhaps we never could).

By concentration and monopolization of power, I believe Baudrillard means the gains in power in the hands of government and corporations at the expense of the power lost from the hands of individuals via cultural groups. The anger within Islam is in response to this shift in power. The response with the most impact, sadly, has been a terrorist one.

The immorality of systems is a result of the immorality of people. The systems I refer to are human systems. If these systems cause or allow evils such as child labour, murders, etc, they are inherently immoral. And ignorance is no excuse: the fool who does evil may not know it, but this does not mean what he does is good; it is still evil.

This "enemy operating in the shadows" that you speak of is not unlike the "phantoms" that Baudrillard points out to us. They are everywhere. Just as America was seeing red during the height of Soviet Communism, they are feeling fear in the face of the terrorist response. If you want to fight a war against that, then you're going to need a lot more than munitions. Phantoms are invulnerable to them.