October 31, 2005
New Delhi Terrorism
:A coordinated succession of powerful blasts ripped through two New Delhi markets killed at least 55 people. Another 155 people are reported injured. The blasts occur the weekend before Diwali, the biggest Hindu festival in north India, and befor Id al-Fitr, the festival that closes the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
(Filed under: Asia, India, Global Issues, Terrorism)
October 10, 2005
Indonesia Bombing Investigation
:Investigators in Bali believe that the bombings are not linked to the al Qaeda terrorist network and instead are the work of a small group like the one that perpetrated the July London subway bombings. Investigators are searching for two men that appear to have helped the suicide bombers.
(Filed under: Asia, Indonesia, Global Issues, Terrorism)
Commentary - The Domino Theory Revisited
:This week, President Bush gave a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy that was intended to layout his strategy for fighting and winning the War on Terrorism. It was also supposed to deal with the rationale for continuing the fight in Iraq. Unfortunately, the country did not get anything new – simply a rehashed Cold War policy that was arguably incorrect at the time and certainly is not appropriate to this current global situation.
With a staff of Cold War warriors (i.e. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) and Russian experts (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) it is not unexpected that the Bush Administration often sees things through the old Cold War prism. And with this predisposed desire to think in Cold War, us vs. them terms, it is not a surprise that a favorite policy of the Cold War, the Domino Theory, is the strategy that Bush used this week to explain his strategy to fight the War on Terrorism. Not surprising but terribly disappointing.
The Domino Theory was first advocated by the Eisenhower Administration in 1954 and is very simple to understand. It stated that the United States would defend all democratic nations from Communism, no matter how small or insignificant to American interests, because if one fell then like dominoes, all nations around the Communist state would also fall. Historically, this theory has taken a lot of heat. The United States would eventually lose the Vietnam war but Communism did not sweep all of Southeast Asia. Instead, only Vietnam and Laos are today Communist states and I believe that much can be argued they are that, not because of the Domino Theory, but instead because nationalist campaigns in both countries looked for supporters to fight the Western Imperialists and found Communism to be a natural supporter.
But even if the Domino Theory was correct in its predictions during the Cold War, it is beyond rational thought to use its strategy in fighting terrorism. While Bush is correct to state that it is the intention of radical Islamic Fundamentalists to force the United States to retreat to create a “vacuum…[and] to gain control of a country [as] a base to launch attacks and conduct their war against non-radical Muslim governments,â€? it is blatantly false to believe this has much chance of success. As Bush himself said, “over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Jordan for potential takeover.â€? This is in addition to the nations of Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, and others that they did take power in. Islamic Fundamentalists used Afghanistan since 1989 to attempt to control the Middle East. Fighters trained by the CIA went throughout the Muslim region in the early 1990s and tried to exert control in regimes from Bosnia to Egypt. They failed. By 1997, even Iran was secularizing, and the only nation under Islamic Fundamentalist control was Afghanistan.
History is not a perfect predicator of the future. But the people of the Middle East have been given the option of Islamic Fundamentalist rule over the past decade and a half. Where they have had any choice, they have rejected it. They have asked to modernize, to secularize, not to turn the clock back, even in places like Iran. There is no indication that even if Iraq becomes an Islamic Fundamentalist state that it will sweep like a wave across the entire Middle East. That is good news because as long as the current strategy is to continue to fight the same battle, in the same way, the likelihood of the United States being forced out by guerrillas fighting on their own soil like in Vietnam grows larger by the day. In that case, we can only hope that the Cold War strategy of the Domino Theory fails to materialize a second time.
(Filed under: Iraq, Bush Administration, Middle East, Commentary, America, Global Issues, Terrorism)
October 3, 2005
Terrorism in Bali
:Three terrorist suicide-bombers killed themselves and nineteen others (14 Indonesians and five foreigners) in Bali, Indonesia. The attack took place in a tourist hot spot in the middle of shops and restaurants. Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation in the world and has been the scene of a number of terrorist attacks from fundamentalist organizations such as al Qaeda.