Interesting thought raised by Mary-Jane Deeb on PBS NewsHour (re. the Algerian bombings, http://www-tc.pbs.org/newshour/rss/media/2007/12/12/20071212_algiers28.mp3) on 12/12, when responding to a question put to her by Margaret Warner on the extent of support to Islam in Algeria. According to Mary-Jane, and I'm paraphrasing, "the support is variously estimated at 15-30%, but
- only a minority commit violent acts,
- others may support violent action but not themselves kill,
- yet others may give money for Islamic causes but do not want to know what these people are doing, and then
- you have some who are neutral, and
- finally at the other end of the spectrum those who are actually critical' of these actions"
This distribution bears a remarkable similarity to opinions on Waterboarding, destruction of those tapes by the CIA, or for that matter, any of the other brazenly criminal political events that have taken place in our country in the recent past and been aped in various parts of the world (remember we set ourselves as the 1st world, the leader, torchbearer, the gold standard, but that's another story in there..)
We could say for example
- there are just a minority who actually participate in waterboarding, torture, wars of aggression (___name your crime) like 'Bush/Cheney and their minions' (love that phrase, heard it on the snippet on 'Climate change hearings' on PBS yesterday),
- there are others who approve of such behavior but look the other way,
- there are still others who give money for such right-wing neo-con causes that support these activities,
- others who are neutral (the apathetic public), and then
- there are those who are critical but probably afraid to speak out, and
- lastly there are brave souls who are critical and do speak out...
Just being an armchair political scientist I would hazard a guess that this same distribution (the old Bell curve) of support for all kinds of political causes can be found in all parts of the world - Afghanistan, erstwhile Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon... YET, YET.. we have bombed two countries out of shape, and are blithely pondering annhilation of a third using the proclivities of the small violent minority in these countries for despicable causes, scapegoating in the process entire nations, cultures and religions as being EVIL, while we keep excusing ourselves of one atrocity after another conducted by our violent minority by saying - oh those were the bad apples in Abu Ghraib, oh this was a military error in the white phosphorous gassing of Faluja, oh that third was just enhanced military questioning while giving swim lessons...
And when you think that their violent minority consists of "non-state" actors, mostly disabled, disillusioned, handicapped out-of-work dregs of their society (http://disabilitytechnews.anhnses.com/archives/150 ), while our violent minority consists of the supposedly lawful (I say, supposedly, remembering the Bush/Gore tug-of-war) representatives of our government that have managed to hijack our systems of checks and balances and have wrapped the flag around themselves and their criminality, then you can understand the enormity of the world's problems!
