In an earlier post, I had asserted that the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was an exercize in pre-theoretical violence...nothing that a small group of dedicated guerrillas could do would change US policy in the global economy or in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Events may prove me wrong. First there are the widening economic effects of the bombings in the US economy which may be much larger than I had imagined.

But, in terms of the attacks themselves, I had forgotten the theories of Frantz Fanon that I had read in the '60's when trying to understand guerrilla warfare in North Africa, Vietnam and, later in South America. I want to suggest to the students of private and public violence that Fanon may be a better analyst than am I. I would hope that we both are wrong...that American response will be balanced and constructive....but it looks like Fanon may have a better grasp on the social psychology of terror than do I.

The ideas of Fanon on Guerrilla warfare.

Most of the rhetoric one hears on the media from American politicians and American commentators about the destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon presents the engineers of the calamity as if they were insane to do such a thing...as if they had no other aim than hatred of the USA to motivate them to such madness. For those who would like to step back and think a bit about the larger questions of motive and intent, a good place to start is with the writings of Frantz Fanon, who fought against the French in Algeria after WWII.

In brief, Fanon argued that the terrible violence of personal terror was an effective weapon in guerilla warfare. France had high tech armament with which to fight; Algerians had only hand weapons and their bodies to use against the French army and the wealth of Colonial France. Fanon argued that such violence did two things; first it created the belief among French soldiers and French citizens that there was no one to trust...all Algerians were 'enemy' of the Colonists. Second, the reaction of the French army against innocent Algerians would widen and deepen the social base from which guerrillas could draw support.

If we step back and look at the response in the USA and that of the Taliban goverrnment in Afghanistan, Fanon's theory of guerilla warfare seems to be confirmed. The hatred and violent rhetoric of US politicians together with the vigilanti attacks upon Islamic Americans...or those thought to be Islamic Americans, bespeak the explosion of distrust among Americans of ALL THINGS ISLAMIC. And the call from President Bush, Colin Powell and other members of the US government for a patriotic war against all countries which support terrorists gives one some sense of the efficacy of the WTC bombing to engender suspicion, mistrust and a drive for revenge against millions of persons unknown and unanswerable to the destruction at the WTC and the Pentagon.

And if USA war-time policy becomes fact; the use of military violence against Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and the rest of the '60 countries' alleged by US 'experts' to support anti-American violence...if this should happen, tens of millions of Islamic believers from the Phillipine Islands to Morocco will view the USA as an indiscriminate butcher of the wretched of the earth.

The writings of Chairman Mao about the use of the population as an ally against colonialism/western exploitation also bears on the outcome of the WTC tragedy...if there is indiscriminate American response, the present sentiment of the Islamic world...that of horror and rejection of the bombings, that sentiment will fade fast and active guerrillas with find more and more support as American violence continues against Islamic countries.

Islamic religion forbids the use of violence except against those who violate the peace of Islam. It would be easy for Islamic guerrillas and their limited supportes to make the case that the USA, using violence against innocent and peacable muslims, does indeed constitute a threat to the Peace of Allah and the Islamic world.

There are, in the desperately poor countries of North Africa, the Mid-east and the Islamic Orient, an endess supply of young men, uneducated, devout, jobless and without hope for the future.

And if the USA should include Cuba in its list of terrorist countries, direct violence against it would trigger ever more anger and outrage among the young men and women of Latin America.

****************

Born on the island of Martinique in 1925, Fanon fought with the allied forces against Nazi Germany in Europe during the second World War and afterwards studied psychiatry in France, where he published his first book, Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks). While practicing medicine in Antilles in northern Africa during the French-Algerian war, Fanon actively supported and organized a resistance to French colonialism by authoring two books outlining an insurgent Third World uprising: L'An V de la revolution algerienne (Year Five of the Algerian Revolution), and Les Damnes de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth).

More about Frantz Fanon at:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=Frantz+Fanon