Dangerous Ideas
Tariq Ali argues that terrorists have changed the world in ways that serve their own religious, political and ideological aims. They've forced the West to compromise on the very foundations of liberal democracy and wind back hard-won freedoms in the name of security.
Speaking at the recent Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Ali provocatively suggests that the terrorists' actions pale in comparison to the West's retributive "Wars on Terror". In fact he calls these wars "State Terrorism" of which the cruel backlash has been an increase in the ranks of extremist organizations.
In this broad-sweeping discussion, Ali draws a parallel with the current geopolitical situation and that of the Western world in the late 19th century. Like today, that society was in a period of transition, with no meaningful political opposition. What emerged then was a group of violent activists in the form of anarchists.
Ultimately Ali's message is: we must understand the motivations of terrorists in order to deal effectively with them. And to Ali this means relinquishing our bias to Israel and our occupation of parts of the Middle East.
Tariq Ali appeared at the 2010 Festival of Dangerous Ideas, presented by the Sydney Opera House and St James Ethics Centre. Chair of the discussion was Ann Mossop.
Tariq Ali was in Australia to present the 2010 Edward Said Memorial Lecture at the University of Adelaide.
Scion of a famous Punjabi political family, Tariq Ali is a writer, filmmaker and occasional broadcaster. He has written more than two dozen books on world history and politics, and seven novels (translated into over a dozen languages) as well as scripts for the stage and screen. He is a regular contributor to "The Guardian" and the "London Review of Books", and is a longstanding editor of the "New Left Review". He currently lives in London.
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By notme, at Oct 29, 2010 05:35 AM
As of today, the count of US 'military' casualties in Iraq on antiwar.com is 4,427.
So, one dangerous idea is that the US politicians and media who lied to begin this Iraq war are more dangerous to the American people than Osama Bin Laden.
This of course doesn't refer to Iraqi casualties. We still have the Lancet/John's Hopkins statistical style estimates of over a million 'excess' deaths. These war logs document 66,000 'civilian casulaties. This from a military that tends to call every dead body a 'terrorist'. And its only the deaths that a US unit reported in about. The comparison of these events against IragBodyCounts' database says there's 15, 000 'new' deaths in these logs that we didn't know about. Somewhere, I saw a number of over 200,000 deaths reported in these logs.
On the day of 9-11, I made what I thought was the gruesome prediction that we as the US would kill five times as many civilians in retribution for those attacks. In other words, about 15,000 people. Sad to say, I was very, very, very wrong in how bloody and brutal my country could be. No really knows how many people in Afghanistan and Iraq have died because of our wars of retribution. But, just for an example, lets say 300,000. That's 100 for every dead American on 9-11.
And still counting as our 50,000 'non-combat' troops in Iraq keep killing people. And our 100,000 mercenary/contractors in Iraq keep killing people. And as Obama tries one Bush-style surge after another in his 'right war' in Afghanistan that's made these last twp years the deadliest years on record in that war. Oh, and don't forget Obama's new proxy and drone war in Pakistan that keeps killing people.
With a nation apparently about to decide to vote for Democrats who will continue all of these wars, or for Republicans who will continue all of these wars, that 100:1 ratio looks certain to get a whole lot worse. In a country where big majorities say they want all these wars to end, it looks like approximately 98% to 99% will go to the polls and vote for the politicians who will continue these wars indefinitely. Someday, I'll probably be writing about the good ol days when we'd only killed 100 people for eveyone who died on 9-11.
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