Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Well, maybe I should have qualified that "wrong!" with "I believe that is absolutely, completely" but to me it's a "proven" fact, I suppose. I would go so far to say that potential suicide bombers are a tradable commodity between Islamic terrorist groups (and even other unrelated groups), and because of the laws of supply and demand, "price" signals are even a relevant concept. Also Adam Smith's invisible hand will dictate that terrorist organisations are competing for the best. USA has worked hard in reducing the production and distribution - but demand is still strong (consumption is steady) and there is still a glut in the market from the Afghanistan/Iraq training camp days.

1 comment:

Dr Clam said...

It has also become clear to me that you are talking primarily about suicide terrorism, which is a small subset of the problem. For instance, all but a vanishingly small proportion of the 100,000 or so Algerian civilians murdered by terrorists were shot or hacked to death by people who walked away from the scene. I don't think you have to be a brainwashed automaton to do evil. I don't think the pilots who bombed Dresden were brainwashed automata, f'rinstance. To continue your analogy, I would say that the 'fissile material' in the cruise missiles- where the cruise missiles are *all* the terrorists- is not a calculated desire to provoke a certain political reaction from the victims' government, but a hunger and thirst for justice, a hunger that has grown so bad as to swallow up reason and pity.