ZGram - 10/6/2001 - "The 911 Attack, Guerrilla Warfare and the Vulnerabilities of Centrality"

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

October 6, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Much has been made of the way the German Army during World War II dealt
with the widespread scourge of "Partisans" - cells of underground fighters
who sabotaged the war effort and endangered the safety of both the
Wehrmacht and German civilians.

I remember from personal experience that the brutalities of Partisans were
feared much more than open warfare methods, such as the bombs the Allies
dropped on us.  Partisans hid behind buildings, in cellars or in the leafy
forests and were skilled in extremely sneaky attacks - such as stringing
invisible wire across roads and thus decapitating motorcycle dispatch
riders, or tying explosives to the backs of dogs that were seeking warmth
and food underneath the wagons of the fleeing civilians.

It was no secret in those years that many Partisans were Jewish Communists,
especially in Partisan leadership positions, organizing and monitoring the
Partisan cells as well as supplying them with weapons, clothes and
ammunition.  When Partisans were caught, the Wehrmacht - and sometimes the
civilians - made short shrift with the subversives and either strung them
up on trees and lamp posts or finished them off with a bullet.

The problems with the Partisans were compounded by the fact that they
didn't obey The Hague Convention's Rules of Land Warfare and wore no
uniform that would have identified them as the opposition.  In fact, they
often wore German uniforms, committing atrocitities and then blaming them
on the Germans.

Therefore, when a Partisan nest was cleaned out in a Russian or Polish
village, it was often impossible to tell who participated in Partisan
activities and who was simply tilling his land, and one must regretfully
draw the conclusion that sometimes the guilty were executed along with the
innocent.

I ask you to keep that in mind as you read the provocative article below.
What really is the difference between a treck of German civilians or a Red
Cross train of wounded soldiers from the front being sacrificed to
explosives, with the German Army subsequently engaging in fierce reprisals
- or a skyscraper office being blown to bits, with the American military
threatening to bomb Afghanistan civilians in a reprisal attack, as everyone
expects and many heartily approve.

Some might object to the analogy and argue:  It's not the same at all!  The
Germans were the aggressors;  America is merely minding its own business
and helping the Israelis out a bit!  But if you read the Internet you know
there are many who will say that an undeclared, aggressive war has been
fought by successive American goverments on the rest of the world for a
very long time with horrid loss of life.

As you read the article below, remember that yesterday's "Partisans" are
today called "Guerrillas" or "Terrorists" - new names for very old tactics.


[START]

The 911 Attack, Guerrilla Warfare and the Vulnerabilities of Centrality

 In commenting on the so-called 911 attack -- ie, the attack against the
World Trade Center and Pentagon of September 11, 2001 -- there have been
numerous assertions that the men who carried out their suicide missions
were 'cowards'; but as several later commentators have observed, this
characterization is obviously wrong in the sense that a man who knowingly
gives his life to carry out a mission -- though perhaps crazy or demented
-- can hardly be called cowardly.  For all this, however, there is a sense
in which the 'cowardly' appellation is justified, namely, in the sense that
a fight in which one side violates the rules which are supposedly in force
suggests that the violator is afraid -- ie, 'too cowardly' -- to fight
otherwise.

In the 911 attack, the rules which one might claim were violated were that
the attackers did not make a formal declaration of war and then array
themselves on some sort of traditional battlefield where they would have
been mowed down without delay, but instead chose to make a 'sneak attack',
and furthermore, attacked civilian targets rather than military ones, at
least in the case of the WTC.

  As it happens, however, the perpetrators of the 911 attack did not flaunt
the modern rules of war.  For one thing, modern warfare has sanctioned
assaults on civilian targets, as when the British 'carpet-bombed' German
cities in WWII -- most notably Dresden -- and when America firebombed Tokyo
and dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Beyond this, modern
warfare has not required any formal declaration of war, as has been
demonstrated by all the 'police actions' of the last half-century from
Korea to Kosovo.

Even 'sneak attacks' are quite acceptable ('sneak', we observe, is merely a
term to denigrate what we praise in the word 'stealth'): After all, one of
the biggest attacks in history -- the cross- channel Allied invasion of
Europe in 1945 -- was exactly that.  But there is nothing surprising in all
this; for one of the most famous books on warfare, Sun Tzu's "Art of War",
advocates deception and other tactics which would never be condoned by
those who consider themselves bound by the warfare equivalent of the
Marquis of Queensbury rules.

In fact, even the much-celebrated Geneva Conventions, which are held by
many to be the modern 'rules of war', are simply actions which each side
avoids because they fear that the enemy will return the disfavor.  In
short, therefore, while it may be perfectly true that all's fair in love
and war, intelligent war-makers have the sense not to push the envelope
lest it seal their doom by becoming a mailed fist.

The 911 Attack, however, was not conventional warfare but rather
"guerrilla" warfare.  This presents an interesting situation because in
recent years there have been successful prosecutions of WWII German
commanders for the "ex post facto" 'war crime' of executing members of
civilian populations which harbored guerrillas in retaliation for guerrilla
attacks.  What such prosecutions have done, in effect, is to set a legal
precedent of sorts which significantly undercuts the ability of armies to
suppress guerrillas. (...).

While the question of how to combat guerrilla warfare is obviously an
important one, a logically prior question is that of collective
responsibility.  While pundits -- and especially Jewish ones -- have always
oy veyed loudly over the thought that any population could be held
collectively responsible for the actions of a small number of its members,
in fact this is the kind of garbage-thinking typical of liberals, who
hasten to embrace "group rights", but will never acknowledge group
"wrongs". In particular, even when armies fight one another in "legitimate"
warfare, there is always an element of collective responsibility, since
anyone who puts on a uniform is "collectively responsible" for the deeds
performed by his side, at least as far as the opposing armies are
concerned.

But more than this, it is simply silly to think of civilian segments of the
population as bearing no responsibility for what their fighters do; for it
is civilians whose support makes the war effort possible, from the farmer
who grows the food to the armsmaker who supplies the guns.  The only
distinction that can be made among people is in the matter of the degree of
their participation, though it may be difficult to compare the degree of
participation of the soldier to that of the politician who votes for war or
the newspaper editor who whips up war fever.  Still, there are some obvious
distinctions that can be made: The armsmakers and politicians obviously
bear a heavier responsibility than do the farmers and busboys; and thus
those who are 'more guilty' ought to be punished first.

The relevance of collective responsibility to guerrilla warfare is the same
one the Germans grappled with in WWII: How guilty is the population which
supports the guerrillas?  The answer, of course, is that -- barring any
reasonable and functional way to distinguish between guerrillas and
civilians -- there is nothing to do but treat them the same.  But does this
mean that civilians should be punished when guerrillas attack?

The answer is really a political one: If it helps the overall effort, yes;
otherwise, no.  That is, a firm policy of punishing civilians in
retaliation for guerrilla activities may possibly cause the guerrillas to
stop or reduce their activities; but if such retaliation causes widespread
resistance among the population, it may not be a good idea.  Political
considerations are paramount, even in war.

  But whatever the final judgment may be on meting out punishment for
guerrilla acts, the fact remains that guerrilla warfare occurs because a
hefty portion of the population which supports the guerrillas is hopping
mad, but powerless to do anything about it via conventional means.  In
fact, guerrilla warfare has been called the warfare of the weak, and such
weapons as chemical or biological agents have been called the poor man's
arsenal.  Ironically, however, what the existence of such weapons proves is
that it is "modern nation-states" which are in a very real sense poor and
weak, because they have very little defense against determined opponents
willing to engage them as guerrillas.

  Now in case it is not obvious, the reason why civilized societies are
vulnerable to guerrilla warfare generally, and chemical and biological
warfare agents in particular, is because civilized societies are
characterized by centralization, from supermarkets and community water
systems to urban living and creeping-socialism government.  (...)  From
this it follows that civilization is vulnerable to guerrilla warfare
because attacks on points of centrality can produce widespread disruptions,
particularly when chemical or biological agents are utilized.  In contrast,
primitive societies have many fewer points of centrality, which means that,
while they are far less efficient than civilized societies, this
inefficiency is balanced by a redundancy of functions that make the system
far more difficult to disrupt. For example, a water supply using
'redundant' individual wells cannot be disrupted as easily as a society
with a centralized water system, in which a single attack can knock out the
water supply for a large population.

The above observations are important because of the lesson which can be
drawn from it.  In particular, the Third World represents a distinct danger
to civilization: The white man who created it needs to take up the burden
of bringing that civilization to his [disadvantaged] brothers so that they
will not hate or be jealous of the white man's accomplishment and thereby
seek to destroy it, but instead will have a stake in preserving it, and
indeed will possess the same vulnerabilities of centralization as [advanced
societies].  (...)

The lesson of the Third World's danger to civilization is the same as the
lesson which can be learned from the conflict of capitalism and socialism,
a conflict which is fueled by resentment against wide disparities in
wealth.  While those of us inclined toward a free-market philosophy might
be wont to dismiss such complaints as assault on the 'inalienable right to
be rich', such a right is of little use when a poor man is holding a
pitchfork to one's throat.  Accordingly, even if they do not excite one's
charitable impulses, disparity of wealth and resentment of achievement
ought to foster an attentiveness to one's own enlightened self- interest.

  In conclusion, the following ought to be noted: Civilization is fragile,
and thus that singular product of civilization -- freedom -- is also
fragile.  And these things are especially fragile when there exists a
tumescence of barbarians high on religious dogma who want to destroy them.
Building civilization and nurturing freedom has taken centuries, but with
the proper weapons directed at points of centrality, civilization can be
destroyed in an instant.  So if we want to preserve civilization, we had
better be looking for more enlightened solutions than laying waste some
remote habitat of a clutch of religious troglodytes.

(Source:  john@thebirdman.org / website at http://www.thebirdman.org )

=====

Thought for the Day:

"Do I 'deny the Holocaust'? No!  No indeed. I hope the  Holocaust is not
denied and never forgotten. I hope the Holocaust is remembered  as the
greatest propaganda effort and hate campaign ever waged against a
civilized people."

(Sent to the Zundelsite)