BTDT
As John Lennon is quoted about the 1960s: "Everyone dressed up but nothing changed."
It's (been) self-evident that wars on terror do mostly nothing. It should be wars on bad ideas, or wars on stopping the good ones from being implemented.
Recently I was reading a book on climate change, with the interesting factoid that almost 1000 attempts have been made for a consensus on what to do about climate change over decades and nothing has changed. In that case it's probably a battle to see whose ideas get implemented, and there have been many good ones proposed from all sides over the years. As I recall, Obama's first 100 days were full of good ideas, and the next president will have them in that same period, most merely repeated or recycled, in hopes that s/he can take credit for them.
When there's a terrorist attack, a counterattack is planned (a bad idea) within a short time, or the suspects are captured and arrested, then tried and convicted by rules of law, yet attacks keep happening because the ideologies are still alive and evolving. (Recently John Kerry asserted that ISIS's base is eroding, but is probably evolving). With climate change, we've been "under assault" for decades with not one effective "counterattack". In a way people have become inured to impasses, or expect them as a part of a routine or formula--like watching a film peripherally and following the predicable plot. The machinations give people a sense that something is being done, when the countermeasures obviously have not worked since 9/11 because attacks are still happening, and people become progressively more cynical and more distracted.
Election years are a time for dressing up, because it's what we do.
***
An interesting observation that's stayed with me: while looking at the grid of photos in a Google search "Brussels Attack", there aren't any really iconic photos, as if the grave nature of the attack has become commonplace and fungible (except for perhaps this one). Photography used to able to capture the emotional cadence of horrific events (think photos taken in the Vietnam war), and now has been reduced to scrolling through photos on a smartphone and immediately flitting off to something else.
It's (been) self-evident that wars on terror do mostly nothing. It should be wars on bad ideas, or wars on stopping the good ones from being implemented.
Recently I was reading a book on climate change, with the interesting factoid that almost 1000 attempts have been made for a consensus on what to do about climate change over decades and nothing has changed. In that case it's probably a battle to see whose ideas get implemented, and there have been many good ones proposed from all sides over the years. As I recall, Obama's first 100 days were full of good ideas, and the next president will have them in that same period, most merely repeated or recycled, in hopes that s/he can take credit for them.
When there's a terrorist attack, a counterattack is planned (a bad idea) within a short time, or the suspects are captured and arrested, then tried and convicted by rules of law, yet attacks keep happening because the ideologies are still alive and evolving. (Recently John Kerry asserted that ISIS's base is eroding, but is probably evolving). With climate change, we've been "under assault" for decades with not one effective "counterattack". In a way people have become inured to impasses, or expect them as a part of a routine or formula--like watching a film peripherally and following the predicable plot. The machinations give people a sense that something is being done, when the countermeasures obviously have not worked since 9/11 because attacks are still happening, and people become progressively more cynical and more distracted.
Election years are a time for dressing up, because it's what we do.
***
An interesting observation that's stayed with me: while looking at the grid of photos in a Google search "Brussels Attack", there aren't any really iconic photos, as if the grave nature of the attack has become commonplace and fungible (except for perhaps this one). Photography used to able to capture the emotional cadence of horrific events (think photos taken in the Vietnam war), and now has been reduced to scrolling through photos on a smartphone and immediately flitting off to something else.
