Red Cells

What is it about terrorism that makes US Commentators talk nonsense (Washington Post)?

Wikileaks recently obtained a document which asked what should be the rather unsurprising question 'Does the US export terrorism'.

Of course the US exports terrorism, for the simple reason that the US is a rich county with a very large population of second and third generation immigrants who can afford to engage in the irredentist politics of what they imagine to be their homeland.

The UK has the same problem. The causal nexus of the strife in the Punjab that led to the 1984 siege of the Golden Temple in Amritsar was almost entirely located in Birmingham England.

Until September 11, Rudy Giuliani would never pass up an opportunity to attend an IRA fundraiser. But support from New York City flowed to both sides of the sectarian conflict in Ireland, just as they do to both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian issue.

Expatriate irredentists are often the biggest obstacle to a peace process. They fund the conflicts but experience none of the consequences. They collect the money to buy bullets and bombs to murder and maim, but they only every acknowledge the injuries caused against their side. So the expatriates are always the last holdouts.

This is of course known to anyone who specialized in counter-terrorism before 9-11. But since then everyone in the security world has declared themselves an expert in counter-terrorism, most basing their models on the experience of the cold war era when the most visible terrorist groups were state sponsored.