This posting is taken
verbatim from my published writings of 1985 and 1986. It speaks to terrorism and the reactions to terrorism.
(As a side note, on other
occasions I have written admiringly of Ronald Reagan - as opposed to the
presidents following him) in that he launched attacks only against tiny,
powerless countries unlikely to cause any trouble.)
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Terrorism is a pretty
good place to start this year's predictions. In my 1985 predictions, I said, "I look for Khadafi to
promote some sensational mischief within the first 6 months of 1985. He is too smart to attempt any direct
military engagement against his stronger neighbors or those with important
western alliances. That leaves him
an outlet where he is virtually invulnerable and unstoppable. This leads to my prediction of high
level terrorist acts." I
continued with this prediction,
"For the greatest part, the terrorism we have suffered in the
United States has been the home grown variety - neither very skilled nor
organized nor prolonged. I predict
we are going to see more of the big league terrorism. Moreover, I predict our government will be no more
successful in heading this off than it has been in dealing with it
overseas. We must realize that
terrorism is the most economical form of warfare ever developed. 500 men and women could raise almost
unimaginable havoc with our nation of more than 225 million. At that, I am being extremely
conservative. 100 could do
it. I do not think we will see
anything on that large a scale.
But we will see it - more than we will like - within the next couple of
years."
For 1986, I want to extend that old
prediction a bit. We are dealing
with people whose thinking is alien to our own, but very close to that of our
president. He is a secular
ideologue. They are religious
ideologues. In
religion, the more far fetched the premise, the deeper the belief has to be to
accept it. The deeper the belief,
the greater the commitment. People
who deeply believe the bizarre - that, for example, a man who dies while
killing an enemy of his faith will go directly to heaven where he will be cared
for by seven beautiful women - are quite delighted to blow themselves up. President Reagan has much the
same intensity of commitment to his beliefs as do the religious fanatics. When we examine the options that are
open to us to fight terrorists, I hark back to an observation I made back in
l970 - ... the powerful are
powerless when their enemy is too small to be identified, too scattered to be
confined, too poor to be penalized, too desperate to be frightened. Let's put that in
perspective. It is easy to condemn
terrorism as not fighting fair.
However, it appears rather stupid and cavalier to expect poor people to
fight only on the terms of their enemies who can afford armies and aircraft and
sophisticated weaponry.
Obviously,
President Reagan does not read my sermons. And somebody other than me wrote the script for his recent
press conference. There he was,
standing tall in the griddle, promising all kinds of drastic actions in
response to the recent terrorist acts.
He acted as though the Palestinian terrorists would shrink in fright,
and throw away their bombs.
Unfortunately for all of us, the Palestinians have a script of their
own.
With
this background, we are led to a number of logical predictions. (1) There will be more, not fewer terrorist acts this year than
ever before. (2) Some of these terrorist acts will
directly target Americans.
(3) At least one of these terrorist acts will take place on American
soil.
All
this will leave President Reagan with what appears to be an interesting
dilemma. I have to correct
that statement. This would leave
me - and many other people with a dilemma if we were President. But we are not. And I do not think President Reagan is
nearly as confused as someone who is less of an ideologue would be. I am confident he will play the role he
has scripted for himself. (4) He
will react with violence. The
questions are; what kind of
violence, and where, when, and
against whom he will use it. I
predict the first thing he will do is to emulate the Soviet Union. From what we read, they were
successful in obtaining the release of their diplomats by resorting to personal
level, retaliatory terrorism quite recently. Their success, I should note, hurts us. What we and the world need is for the
Soviets to suffer a rash of terrorist acts. That is the only thing that would motivate them to work with
us against terrorism. And without
the two great powers working in concert, there will be no end to
terrorism. My prediction is, then,
(5) we will unleash the CIA.
That means that (6) we will have some covert actions - Vietnam-Phoenix
type assassinations and that sort of thing done by people we will disown. We regularly observe governments
denying involvement with terrorism.
The only people admitting it are the small groups seeking publicity, or
who are attempting to kill alliances or agreements they oppose. A second Reagan action
might be to privately encourage an Israeli action against what we are told a re
the terrorist training camps in Libya, attacks we would then publicly deplore,
but "understand." (7) I predict this will happen, but only on
a limited scale, for reasons I'll get to in a moment. Still, I do not see any of these satisfying our President's
need for one of those, charge up the hill boys, bombs bursting in air, stand
tall responses. Additionally, we
need something to take our mind off the economy, and Gramm Rudman, and
taxes. In short, we need
another Grenada. The question is
where do we find someone we can beat up on without much fear of losing? We sure as the devil are not going back
into Lebanon. Libya is the best
bet. After all, the Marine hymn
speaks glowingly of the shores of Tripoli.
The
other element we must have to support the shoot em up response I have predicted
is what our press is fond of calling the smoking gun. Ask and ye shall receive. Despite his erratic behavior, I do not believe Khadaffi
wants a direct conflict with the U.S.
Therefore, I predict (8), we will provoke Libya into a military response
against one of our planes that will be on a spy overflight, or we will taunt
them with our ships near enough to their shores to the point they shoot, or at
least where we can claim they shot first.
(Remember the Gulf of Tonkin?) Then, I predict (9), we will enjoy one quick, ferocious
blast at them. The timing (10), I
predict, will be no earlier than mid February. That will give our nationals a
couple of weeks leeway to clear out of Libya prior to the short fight. (11) At this, President Reagan's
popularity will climb higher than ever.
NOTE:
THE BOMBING ATTACK INTENDED TO KILL GADAFFI (revised spelling) TOOK
PLACE 6 WEEKS AFTER THE ABOVE WAS PUBLISHED.
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