Sunday, April 20, 2003
The Third Bubble - NY Times
Thomas Friedman's column today is worth reading. I like the imagery of the "Terrorism Bubble" - like the stock market bubble and the corporate ethics bubble. Where I part company with Friedman however, and quite strongly, is that he seems to be stating a little too strongly the idea of a "return to normalcy" (my term). That kind of talk is still premature. There's still a lot of work to be done on the terrorism, and more to the point, the state sponsors of terrorism front, although I agree that we need to be very careful about where we let things like the Patriot Act take us.
[...]Like the stock market and corporate bubbles, the terrorism bubble was the product of a kind of temporary insanity, in which basic norms were ignored and excessive behavior was justified by new theories. In the case of the terrorism bubble, we were told that suicide bombing was the work of desperate people who had no other way to get America's or Israel's attention.
People across Europe and the Arab-Muslim world bought such theories. Some Muslim religious leaders even came up with rulings justifying the suicide bombing of civilians in pizza parlors. Arab media called the terrorists "martyrs." It was moral creative accounting: if you are weak, there is no limit on what you can do, and if you are strong — like America and Israel — you have no moral right to defend yourself. Worse, after 9/11, some in the Arab-Muslim world actually believed they had found a new balance of power with America — through the suicide bomber.
And we in America believed them, so we blew up the bubble more.[...]
People across Europe and the Arab-Muslim world bought such theories. Some Muslim religious leaders even came up with rulings justifying the suicide bombing of civilians in pizza parlors. Arab media called the terrorists "martyrs." It was moral creative accounting: if you are weak, there is no limit on what you can do, and if you are strong — like America and Israel — you have no moral right to defend yourself. Worse, after 9/11, some in the Arab-Muslim world actually believed they had found a new balance of power with America — through the suicide bomber.
And we in America believed them, so we blew up the bubble more.[...]
