Reap the Whirlwind
Spain was sitting pretty for too long. Every time people were mown down in other European capitals, we were reassured the police here were very busy dissipating terror cells. Every time an arrest was made, the public was made very aware of it, and told a future attack upon innocents in a Spanish city was almost non-existent. The central government had been crowing how much tourism in Spain had grown because Spain was seen as a safe destination. Barcelona had become the third most visited city in Europe after London and Paris this year. Cambrils is also a tourist destination, albeit more of a national one.
Am I being harsh? No, because the authorities were guilty of the sin of pride. They prided themselves on being able to dismantle small terror cells, and on sniffing out potential murderers. While they may have helped to avoid other probable attacks, they should not have blinded themselves nor the general public to the real possibility of something like this happening. At the same time, perhaps they should have kept their victories low-key, because by proclaiming them, they were just waving the red flag. And the bull decided to charge.
However, Spain is also the country where the attack with the largest amount of victims happened. In Madrid on March 11th, 2004, over 190 people lost their lives when simply going to work or to school, on the morning commute. Since then, many actions have been taken to prevent another massacre from happening. Those murderers used burner cell phones to trigger the bombs in the commuter trains. No phone can now be sold without being registered, and the information on the buyer filed with the company, ready to be sent to the police in case of the phone being used in a crime. Perhaps now they will set a waiting period on renting a vehicle to do a background check on the renter. But whatever the authorities do, they should not act so assuredly that something like this will not happen again.
While the Spanish government might have acted too brashly, the real culprits are the idiot murderers who delude themselves into thinking they are acting in God's name. And while they are the sole owners of their actions and the results of those actions, their thinking was shaped by us. I heard a pundit today on the radio mention that the radical leftist Catalan political party, CUP (Candidatura d'Unitat Popular) had argued that the real cause of yesterday's "fascist terrorism" is rampant capitalism. The pundit argued that it was not true. But I argue that it is true, if you analyze it and take out the bombastic marxist-sounding words.
The true origins of this way of thinking lie in wahabism and the rise of Saudi Arabia as a world power, thanks to its seemingly endless supply of fossil fuel. Wahabism began as a purer vision of Islam in the eighteenth century. Its founder was Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab. He allied himself with a local chieftain, of the house of Saud, promising that following his vision of Islam would bring the chief power and lands. Wahabism was a reaction against veneration of saints which Wahhab saw as the abomination of idolatry, which was much like how English Puritans saw Catholic practices and rituals. The Saudis have since followed this strict interpretation of Islam and now foment it across the world, including ISIS in Syria, which simply follows a form of wahabism.
Why do we not condemn Saudi Arabia as instigator of these people's acts? Because we are friends with Saudi Arabia. Why are we friends with people who condone these attacks? Because without the petroleum they sell us, our economic system would collapse. Our economy is based on cheap energy, which creates money. If our economy doesn't have cheap energy, our economy doesn't create money, and we have what is known as an economic depression. Yes, I am being simplistic, because there are many more interwoven reasons, but cheap energy is one of them. One of the goals in this economy is that of making money. If a company doesn't make a good profit, it simply closes, even if what it provides is a basic good or service. The free market capitalism touted by most politicians, is what is giving Saudi Arabia the money in exchange for petroleum that then goes to support terrorists. Those terrorists work on real grievances of local people who have suffered under colonialism and its results.
Because, if Europe hadn't embraced colonialism and exploited the Middle East in the past two hundred years, there would not be a fertile ground for these tortured ideas of hitting back to grow. Colonialism is a result of nationalism. A nation needs resources. So it goes to get them from an area of the world where the culture and people are considered inferior to that nation. That treatment of inferiority creates resentment and hatred. Whenever someone is pummeled enough, they will lash out.
This lashing out is what is happening now in Europe and all over the world. It's not something that can be eradicated in a few years' time. It's something that will stay with us for many generations. It's only been from fifty to seventy years ago that the last colonies in the Middle East and Africa have become independent. Memories run deep and long. Some of those memories have the potential to become bullets. Look at what is happening in the United States. The Civil War happened over a hundred fifty years ago. Its aftermath in the law books (segregation) has only disappeared in the last fifty. Its aftermath in people's memories will take much longer to disappear. Our interventions one way or the other in the Middle East are still going on. How much rancor is still being created, only to explode years hence?
Am I being harsh? No, because the authorities were guilty of the sin of pride. They prided themselves on being able to dismantle small terror cells, and on sniffing out potential murderers. While they may have helped to avoid other probable attacks, they should not have blinded themselves nor the general public to the real possibility of something like this happening. At the same time, perhaps they should have kept their victories low-key, because by proclaiming them, they were just waving the red flag. And the bull decided to charge.
However, Spain is also the country where the attack with the largest amount of victims happened. In Madrid on March 11th, 2004, over 190 people lost their lives when simply going to work or to school, on the morning commute. Since then, many actions have been taken to prevent another massacre from happening. Those murderers used burner cell phones to trigger the bombs in the commuter trains. No phone can now be sold without being registered, and the information on the buyer filed with the company, ready to be sent to the police in case of the phone being used in a crime. Perhaps now they will set a waiting period on renting a vehicle to do a background check on the renter. But whatever the authorities do, they should not act so assuredly that something like this will not happen again.
While the Spanish government might have acted too brashly, the real culprits are the idiot murderers who delude themselves into thinking they are acting in God's name. And while they are the sole owners of their actions and the results of those actions, their thinking was shaped by us. I heard a pundit today on the radio mention that the radical leftist Catalan political party, CUP (Candidatura d'Unitat Popular) had argued that the real cause of yesterday's "fascist terrorism" is rampant capitalism. The pundit argued that it was not true. But I argue that it is true, if you analyze it and take out the bombastic marxist-sounding words.
The true origins of this way of thinking lie in wahabism and the rise of Saudi Arabia as a world power, thanks to its seemingly endless supply of fossil fuel. Wahabism began as a purer vision of Islam in the eighteenth century. Its founder was Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab. He allied himself with a local chieftain, of the house of Saud, promising that following his vision of Islam would bring the chief power and lands. Wahabism was a reaction against veneration of saints which Wahhab saw as the abomination of idolatry, which was much like how English Puritans saw Catholic practices and rituals. The Saudis have since followed this strict interpretation of Islam and now foment it across the world, including ISIS in Syria, which simply follows a form of wahabism.
Why do we not condemn Saudi Arabia as instigator of these people's acts? Because we are friends with Saudi Arabia. Why are we friends with people who condone these attacks? Because without the petroleum they sell us, our economic system would collapse. Our economy is based on cheap energy, which creates money. If our economy doesn't have cheap energy, our economy doesn't create money, and we have what is known as an economic depression. Yes, I am being simplistic, because there are many more interwoven reasons, but cheap energy is one of them. One of the goals in this economy is that of making money. If a company doesn't make a good profit, it simply closes, even if what it provides is a basic good or service. The free market capitalism touted by most politicians, is what is giving Saudi Arabia the money in exchange for petroleum that then goes to support terrorists. Those terrorists work on real grievances of local people who have suffered under colonialism and its results.
Because, if Europe hadn't embraced colonialism and exploited the Middle East in the past two hundred years, there would not be a fertile ground for these tortured ideas of hitting back to grow. Colonialism is a result of nationalism. A nation needs resources. So it goes to get them from an area of the world where the culture and people are considered inferior to that nation. That treatment of inferiority creates resentment and hatred. Whenever someone is pummeled enough, they will lash out.
This lashing out is what is happening now in Europe and all over the world. It's not something that can be eradicated in a few years' time. It's something that will stay with us for many generations. It's only been from fifty to seventy years ago that the last colonies in the Middle East and Africa have become independent. Memories run deep and long. Some of those memories have the potential to become bullets. Look at what is happening in the United States. The Civil War happened over a hundred fifty years ago. Its aftermath in the law books (segregation) has only disappeared in the last fifty. Its aftermath in people's memories will take much longer to disappear. Our interventions one way or the other in the Middle East are still going on. How much rancor is still being created, only to explode years hence?
Comments
Post a Comment