Short Stories, Long Odds

(cross posted at http://ratlist.tumblr.com)

We have all watched over the last few days as Twitter went from being a hot social networking tool to being used by brave Iranians to change the world. With media restrictions in place from the Iranian government, the main source of news coming out of Iran was, especially in the first few days, the tweets of students and protestors and supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

As the protest has grown and the days have worn on, the nature of the intelligence one could glean from certain twitter feeds – #IranElection and #GR88, in particular – changed. In the first few days it was a heavy but seemingly pure stream of raw intelligence, dispatches that contained up to the minute updates on everything from events personally observed by the twitters to rumors to video and pictures of the ongoing clash between protestors and government forces.

In the last 48 hours, the main tagged feeds have become diluted: innocently, by western twitterers who have been captivated and motivated by what they’ve read; and more troublingly, by people who are quite obviously disseminating incorrect, inflammatory, or misleading information. The latter is incredibly problematic, as Twitter is not only being used as a source of information for the outside world. It is also being used by activists in separate parts of the country to communicate information about what is happening where they are. So not only does the misinformation dilute the message and news coming from the Iranian people fighting for freedom, it also is detrimental to their efforts, and could very well have life or death consequences.

That is why I’m starting The Rat List – a collection of Twitter users disseminating incorrect or blatantly propagandistic information. Many of these users have new accounts, have no history of accurate updates, and are not trusted sources. They could be Iranian intelligence agents organizing to thwart the efforts of the activists and put down what is becoming a vibrant and viable uprising. They could also just be assholes who think they are being funny. Either way, I am mostly doing this for my own edification, to record some small part of what is happening in a way that I know something about, by analyzing raw intelligence. If it helps out, I’m glad for that too.

Visit http://ratlist.tumblr.com for updates.

Years from now, it is unlikely that anyone other than people like me (re: people with a professional interest in terrorism) will care much about this example of backfired fear-mongering, but I think it is incredibly salient to the Right’s totally ridiculous assertions about how Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist. McCain and Palin raise the specter of terrorism in relation to Barack Obama and now people at their rallies, showing that they have fully bought every email that’s been forwarded to them, think he’s a one man sleeper cell.

The fear of terrorism is raised on what is little else than old racist fears – you can’t implore people to be afraid of a black guy anymore, so the terrorism thing will have to do – and the message that the Right digests becomes that, outside of Barack Obama not wanting to automatically bomb the Middle East to a sheet of glass (which is code for wanting to hug terrorists), he may actually be a terrorist, or in league with them, or ready to welcome them to the White House.

You don’t have to know much about terrorism to know how stupid that is. It is utterly stone dumb. But knowing a little bit about terrorism might bring you the knowledge that the primary battleground in the war on terror is financial. You have to have money to do everything, and in a world where intelligence agencies and law enforcement are usually forced to defend against the last terrorist attack, organizations like the US Treasury do a great deal to stop terrorism before it happens by disrupting terrorist finances. A student of basic history without any special terrorism knowledge would know that the mujahideen in Afghanistan, with some logistical support from the United States, defeated the Soviet Union by fighting an unwinnable, asymmetrical land war that drained the considerable resources of the Soviets and mired them in a conflict from which there was no readily acceptable excision.

Thus it is no surprise that Al-Qaeda supporters using community website forums – the terrorist communication method of choice these days – would express glee at the financial problems the United States is currently experiencing. It is unlikely that Osama bin Laden blogs there under the pen name 3m1r_31057 or something, but these are used as readily as bookstores and radical mosques are as conduits of information, communication, and message control by the modern al-Qaeda network.

It is also no surprise to me that supporters of militant Islamic transnational terrorism against the United States would be excited about the prospect of a John McCain presidency. He’s determined to “win” in Iraq, an outcome with no definable parameters or possible tangible results, and I see no reason to expect McCain to act any differently towards the Middle East than George Bush has. Understanding that, the War in Iraq has been the single greatest recruiting tool that terrorism has ever enjoyed. A continuation of Bush’s policies and the Bush Doctrine as the United States deals with an enormous economic crisis and continues to isolate itself with unilateral foreign policy aggression would no doubt aid the cause of al-Qaeda and the many, many umbrella organizations that function as its wholly owned subsidiaries.

So, in the long run, something like this is probably inconsequential, some chatter among extremists that made it out into the mainstream for consumption. But it is indicative of a totally predictable reception and attitude, a rational approach to American politics by rational actors who also happen to be militant extremists that claim membership in a transnational terrorist organization that makes war on our country. Further foolish military misadventure is a desirable outcome for the enemies of America, and the fact that no one on the left has made this point – ever – on the national scene drives me up the wall.

Not only is the hyper-amped terrorism fear-mongering about Obama totally false and completely unfounded, it also makes no logical sense when applied to the real world, even when you take the stuff about the Manchurian Candidate out of it and you’re only left with a military intention that doesn’t include knocking chips off of shoulders for no good reason, it is also totally misdirected. True fear about terrorism should spring from the prospect of a continuation of the policies of the last 8 years, not from a change in direction about how we conduct ourselves in the world. We should, as a nation, not only be working to prevent the next terror attack and punish those who perpetrated the last one. We should also be working to stop terrorism 5 or 10 or 20 years before it happens.

I hope this is in a textbook my children read:

“People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” – President Bill Clinton

So I think I figured out why I’ve had such a hard time writing since Bush’s poll numbers began to tank and the GOP’s party-wide corruption began unraveling for public display.

I think its because I was right, and now everyone knows.

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Marcus Porcius Cato (for you antiquity buffs out there – Cato the Elder, or Cato the Censor) used to punctuate every speech, motion, and point of order on the floor of the Roman Senate with this phrase. It means, basically, “Carthage must be destroyed.” He would append it to every declaration. Imagine.

“We recommend that taxes shall be raised on olive exports and, further, Carthage must be destroyed.”

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