VIOLENCE FOR ITS OWN SAKE
This WaPost piece by Fareed Zakaria provides the first coherent argument I've heard for thinking that a "war on terrorism," as opposed to a war against enemies using terrorism, might be a meaningful concept. I'm not sure what conclusions I draw, but he paints a convincing, if depressing, picture:
Yet with many terrorist groups -- like ETA, like al Qaeda -- violence has become an end in itself. They want a lot of people dead, period.
Some in Spain have argued that if an Islamic group proves to be the culprit, Spaniards will blame Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. It was his support for America and the war in Iraq that invited the wrath of the fundamentalists. But other recent targets of Islamic militants have been Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, not one of which supported the war or sent troops into Iraq in the after-war. Al Qaeda's declaration of jihad had, as its first demand, the withdrawal of American troops from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden does not seem to have noticed, but the troops are gone -- yet the jihad continues. The reasons come and go, the violence endures.
Read the whole thing.