Emmanuel Goldstein

I think we've all had briefings about the conduct of anti-terrorism operations. We've had to do anti-terrorist operations that might result in somebody's death, and a few days before we started, there was a talk by a psychologist from the civil service.

I thought it was going to be very similar to the talk that I was given 3 years ago when we had the same operation, but I think that they've revised it. 3 years ago, it was just somebody talking to us, asking us if we had compunctions about killing a man when we had to. It was more simple. Now, they had this pep talk where they tell us about the larger socio-political context of terrorism in our region. As somebody who reads a fair bit about terror, I thought I would say some things about what was being mentioned in there.

I didn't expect everything being said to be true or accurate. It's sad but we don't completely trust our government these days. My memory of the talk is hazy because it took place a few days ago but I did jot down a few points that I disagreed with.

The talk seems to imply that Al Qaeda is still active. In a way yes and no. The original Al-Qaeda has not been captured, but they have been rendered ineffective. Most of the terror comes from offshoots of Al Qaeda. It's just like everybody uses IBM compatibles, but not actually IBM computers. And that is why it is not so easy to call the conflict against terror as a "war" because wars as we understand them involve treaties between well defined entities like governments. Terrorism is a guerilla war. Agents of terror are not Al Qaeda themselves, but rather they are spin offs, and organisations which take the example of Al-Qaeda. It's like Al-Qaeda is McDonald's and JI is Burger King. McDonald's invented the concept and the organisational structure of the fast food restaurant, and the rest followed in its stead.

The implications are slightly different because this is not a limited war. There is only 1 way to defeat terrorism, and that is for the terrorists themselves to give up. As of now, there is reason to believe that terrorism is on the wane because people see no point in blowing themselves up when the lives of people in rich countries go on as before.

They talked about examples of terrorism in the world. Nobody mentioned the Jackal or Baader Meinhoff, but they talked about the PLO and the IRA. Strangely enough nobody mentioned the Haghanah. Nobody mentioned that Israel used terrorist tactics against the British in order to obtain their independence.

We went into the reasons for terrorists to attack Singapore. One of the reasons is our ties to the USA. The psychologist outlined correctly one of the reasons why the Arabs don't like the USA: they just come over and take over all the oil and try to get it for as low as they can. But the other reason is something they didn't mention: the USA unconditionally supports Israel, even though they have a very unfair advantage over Palestine. People think about Israel getting terrorist attacks all the time, but they don't really ask too many questions why. A large part is that Israel doesn't have the balls to ask their own people to stop building settlements in the occupied territories.

This injustice is one of the main things that terrorist preachers pick on, rightly or wrongly to convince people that the world is out to get them. Whether it is a legitimate reason is something else but the more important point is that it is something that people can pick on.

Another point they keep on emphasising is that Singapore is not resiliant. Terrorist attacks will have a great adverse impact on Singapore. True, New York and London may have recovered from their respective terrorist attacks, but Singapore might not.

Now this is offensive. We all know that governments milk the terrorist threat for what it's worth: you need us. You need to give up your civil liberties and your rights to us so that we can better protect you from the devil that is out there. Now Singapore goes one up and exaggerates the impact of something that has yet to happen. These things don't work if you don't ratchet up the fear factor up one notch. Ever heard of a city that has been destroyed by a terrorist attack? You could kill 3000 people in NYC and life still goes on. This is the ultimate disillusionment of the terrorist: that life still goes on.

To be sure, there are cities which have shown to be in unmistakable states of decline. Detroit. Los Angeles. Pittsburgh. Marseille. We know that a city can surely fall as it can rise. But terrorists cannot destroy us. Possibly a declining economy can. Are we more vulnerable than Bali, Madrid, Tel Aviv? Are they saying that Singaporeans are soft? Is this a self fulfilling prophecy?

The rise of China is unfortunate for us, actually. One of the worst things to happen to us if the Uighurs were to start becoming terrorists. Whereas in the last 10 years terrorists have been targeting angmohs and their own fellow Arabs (wtf?) now they will be targeting Chinese as well.

But it hasn't happened yet. The US is slowly winning Iraq, and for now terrorism is on the wane. It's been something less compelling this time than 3 years ago. Of course it's a useful exercise for us to go and test ourselves with an exercise. But I just feel quite uncomfortable noting that long after the threat is gone, they will still go on putting us on exercises like this.