Posted by Dan Ewert : 7/28/2004 12:05:00 AM (Archive Link)
We Come in Peace, Shoot to Kill!

The following is a post that I started back on April 15th, but for whatever never finished and therefore never posted.  I just came across it and it seems pretty well done to me, so I'll post it now.

Osama released his proposed peace treaty to Europe today which amounted to “Stop helping the U.S. and we’ll leave you alone.” There’s plenty to say about this. Here’s a few things I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere… rather than rewrite, I’ll let you read ‘em for yourself here, here, and here.

My observations:

Even thought such a “treaty” as OBL is proposing would be approved through the governments, he’s appealing directly to the European populace and is initially trying to circumvent the governments and have the electorates put pressure on them. This is obvious from the phrase, “When you look at what happened and is happening, the killing in our countries and in yours, an important fact emerges, and that is that the oppression is forced on both us and you by your politicians who send your sons, against your will, to our country to kill and to be killed.” Now, with that in mind, what arguments is OBL making to influence the European public?

One, as seen from the above quote, is that bin Laden wants people to see the war on terrorism as an unnecessary thing foisted upon them by their leaders, so he wants to build mistrust between the populace and their governments. Right after this, he says that these governments are acting as vassal states of the U.S., so he wants to create a dichotomy between the U.S. and Europe. Then there’s the usual tripe about all this being about money and the Jews, etc.

Really, what I find most interesting is how he repeatedly appeals to relativism to build doubt about the war in the hearts of relativist-minded Euros. Observe the following quotes:

“Stop shedding our blood in order to protect your own blood”

“We hereby advise you...that your definition of us and of our actions as terrorism is nothing but a definition of yourselves by yourselves, since our reaction is of the same kind as your act. Our actions are a reaction to yours, which are destruction and killing of our people as is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine”

“By what measure of kindness are your killed considered innocents while ours are considered worthless? By what school [of thought] is your blood considered blood while our blood is water?”

The basic argument goes like this: Look, we’re just like you… we’re just trying to defend ourselves against the senseless terrorism you’re committing!

He’s trying to build this equality between what he does and what we do. So once the Euros see that his group aren’t terrorists, they’re freedom fighters (and conversely, that the Euros see themselves as terrorists), they’ll realize the error of their ways and leave him alone.

Here’s one problem with this relativist idea and the answer to his last question about why we value our dead but not his… he’s the enemy. Pretty simple. In a war, you tend to disregard the enemy dead because, well, you’re trying to kill the enemy and your only concern with them is that you’re eliminating enough of ‘em. Also, it’s rather absurd that OBL would be complaining about us not valuing his dead when his group considers Western lives to be not just worthless but actually deserving of death. That’s not just some Western lives or ones belonging to people in the military… it’s all of them. We, on the other hand, just want to get rid of militants and preserve the innocent population. So OBL is appealing to Western morality even though he himself believes none of it.

Another point with the relativism issue as a whole is that Americans see things non-relatively (us and them, good and bad, defenders of freedom and the terrorists, us valuable and them not) because we believe Western culture is superior to his twisted Islamic utopia and is worth preserving. This goes back to an earlier post of mine about conviction. If you’re not convicted about the value and superiority of Western culture, then you will fall victim to those who are convicted about the value of their own culture.