Imagine a terrorist threat that comes from within rather than from foreigners. Let's suppose a number of American Indians decided that they had been oppressed long enough. The scenario is hypothetical, but not inconceivable.
Let's carry it further and suppose that these oppressed tribesmen decided that things had been bad enough that they should even resort to suicide in order to avenge their oppression.
Their lands and homes have been taken from their forefathers by settlers protected by the government. They've been herded onto refugee camps called reservations and kept in poverty and despair.
Their fathers tell them the stories of how their grandfathers resisted the oppressors and how their arrows were no match for the guns and cannons used by the foreign settlers.
Many of the young Indians have gone to schools where they don't learn about the damage done to foreign occupiers by the resistance movement in France. Lessons like that might give them ideas.
But now, the young tribesmen read newspapers in English and watch television. Some of them even have computers and are connected to the Internet.
They see films about Japanese Kamikaze pilots during World war II and about the French resistance. They read about Palestinians blowing themselves up because the settlers in Israel have been their oppressors.
Could American Indians ever commit suicide, even as a last resort against their oppressors. They have no history of blowing themselves up; but then the Palestinians had no history of suicide attacks until they found that they could learn to make and use explosives and found them more effective than throwing stones at tanks.
Might some of the oppressed Indians conceivably equate a suicide attack with any other kind of attack. Isn't riding a horse into a barrage of cannon and machine-gun fire a kind of suicide?
If I die while killing 20 of my enemies, doesn't that serve my people in their war against oppression? Hasn't this been the justification for all soldiers dying in all wars?
Don't I know that if the president sends our young sons into war in Iraq to effect a regime change because he hates or fears Saddam Hussein, that he approves the certain suicide of all those he knows will die?
That's what so many of us love about the president: he reminds us of our earliest tradition as settlers destroying and dominating the oppressed. That's what's so attractive about invading places like Afghanistan and Iraq: we can act like oppressive settlers again.
That's what Americans love about Israel. It acts like America's early settlers and garrisons of troops murdering and maiming tribes of people they considered to be lesser breeds.
America has forgotten the outcome of other conquests by nations and empires that over-extended themselves. All have fallen! They've fallen to resistance. America should know better, having once fallen to resistance in Vietnam. How many young American lives were committed to their leaders' suicidal commitment.
Wasn't America proud when it defeated Iraq in order to free Kuwait? How much resistance could there be to the air power and the firepower of US missiles and modern tanks?
Didn't America demonstrate great strength as the pilots blasted the Iraqis running in retreat on the road out of Kuwait? What easy targets! No resistance!
It's no longer an American frontier. When Iraq is taken by
superior firepower and limited suicides, it may be as docile as
the American Indians, at least for a while.
But what about the resistance to occupations? Isn't South Korea
feeling occupied? What about the Philippines? How about all of
the other places where America has over-extended its military
presence? What about Saudi Arabia, the home of Osama bin Laden?
Two World Trade Centre Towers, a Pentagon Wing and 3,000 lives later, that long-armed resistance still pains America deeply. And, judging from most reports, the mastermind and financier of that resistance is still alive and well. Not even huge rewards offered for his capture have ferreted him out.
The CIA doesn't make good bounty hunters. Those days ended with the American frontier. Israel is using much of its billions of dollars worth of high-powered military hardware to squelch the Palestinian resistance. They haven't learned any more than America has, that you can't kill the resistance of an occupied land of impoverished and oppressed people.
Back to the opening scenario: what will America do when a number of American Indian tribesmen decide that they've had enough, that they've been occupied long enough, been impoverished long enough. Suppose they finally rise up against the oppression. What will America do?
Will America send tanks and F14s and guided missiles into the reservations because there's support coming from within? Will they follow the example of the Israelis? Why not? Why not destroy thousands of natives of the land, just like Israel does? After all, the practice has been entrenched for years; and for years America has not only condoned but supported it.
Should there be an American Indian uprising - a resistance move after generations of submission - the only path for America to take and remain true to itself will be to eliminate the home terrorists.
Destroy their homes and their camps, force them across the borders into Canada and Mexico. Wipe out all the potential sources of their explosives and weapons of mass destruction. Don't call it genocide! It's eliminating terrorism!
America had better start looking deeply into their policies and ideas about what's right and wrong. It can no longer afford to follow a blind policy of might makes right. It can no longer ignore the horrors of the age.
The ease with which weapons of mass destruction will be available to very small groups of people should worry America more than it does.
American leaders seem to think that tighter security, more military defences and weapons will make America safer. They're dead wrong! They say that a regime change in Iraq will reduce the risks of weapons of mass destruction for America.
What America really needs to do is to look at and eliminate the causes of insecurity. They need to ask why? The answers are easy to come by for those who seek the truth.
Why do terrorists want to blow up the World Trade Centre or the Pentagon? Has anybody in authority honestly asked that question without coming up with a stupid George W. Bush response that they're jealous of us.
If people hate you, shouldn't you try to discover why and perhaps change? Wouldn't you need to change if you're hateful, especially since they can now destroy you if you don't.
Just wait until the American Indians really tire of their oppression and occupation! Then the message will really strike home!
Then again, the continued arrogance and blind ignorance of the Bush cartel may provoke even greater tragedies in America before the reservations erupt.
*Paul Balles is a retired American
university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the
Middle East for 34 years. For more information, see
http://www.writerfreelance.com
and http://www.pballes.com.