Terrorism

War on America. The Age A feature p 6.

Lessons from other disasters can inform us as to how to deal with the 9/11 attacks and their consequences.

Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 18 Sept. 2001 Categories: Terrorism

Anniversary of September the eleventh. (Unpublished)

The article examines the power of anniversaries. They can revive traumatic experiences, but they are also opportunities to put those experiences into perspective.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 2002 Categories: Terrorism

So why did they hate us? (Unpublished)

Immediately after 9/11, people asked in anguish, “Why do they hate us?” Two years later we know a lot more, though by no means everything, about each component of the question; that is, who ‘they’ were, who was ‘us’, the nature of the hatred, and why it was there.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 2003 Categories: Fight, Defend & Rid, Flight, Run, Hide & Save Oneself, Terrorism

Through the prism of 9/11 (Unpublished)

When US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that, “The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass murder. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light – through the prism of our experience of 9/11,” he spelt out why the coalition of the willing suffered from a credibility gap. Not everyone viewed events through the same prism, and the prism itself could be hijacked for other scenarios.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 28th Oct 2012 Categories: Fight, Defend & Rid, Flight, Run, Hide & Save Oneself, Survival Strategies, Terrorism

Bali: a wound we must probe. Herald Sun Op-Ed. p 18

The anniversary of the Bali terrorist bombing arouses intense emotions and intense defences among survivors. Both ways of dealing with the wound must be respected. Yet ‘tears of grief are like springs from the past that irrigate the future. When grief is covered up permanently, wounds do not weep but fester.’
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: Oct 9 2003 Categories: Terrorism

New York on Kuta. (Unpublished)

Atrocity on our own feels different to those on others. Beyond the pain we need to ask why it was inflicted on us. Were we guilty? Did we ally ourselves against our interests? Much depends on how we see the perpetrators. They are not soldiers in a war, nor are they freedom fighters. They are most like criminal killer cults with megalomanic ideas. Which countries spawn such criminals and through what injustices requires explanation.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 2002 Categories: Terrorism

The tyranny of terrorism. (Unpublished)

The term terrorism is too wide. This article distinguished 4 types of terrorism that operate on 2 levels. War on terrorism must distinguish the terrorism to be fought if the goals are to be achieved. Thus as the ‘War on Terrorism’ unfolds with the war in Iraq, we might question what is this ‘terrorism’ that is being attacked, and why does it evoke such divergent responses.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 2003 Categories: Fight, Defend & Rid, Flight, Run, Hide & Save Oneself, Survival Strategies, Terrorism

What principles? (Unpublished)

In the wake of the September the 11th events there has been an amazing realignment of friends, foes, and principles. Osama bin Laden whom the US had earlier supported against the Russians became enemy number one, and the Russians who used to be enemy number one have become allies against bin Laden. Condemnation of Russia on the principle that it used state terrorism in Chechnya became irrelevant overnight. Up to the 10th of September, the US condemned on principle Israel targeting the organizers of terrorism. Suddenly it became national policy to get bin Laden dead or alive. Yet the principle as applied to Israel remained the same in the US view, as it curried Arab support. Principles waver according to current perceived survival needs.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: 2001 Categories: Terrorism