On blogs like Billmon, there is an occasional poster who goes by the nick of "Pedro". It may or may not be his real name; not only have I never asked, but it's never struck me as relevant--his postings are invariably insightful and incisive, and coming as they do from a non-American perspective, they offer a chance to see past the ethno-centric blinders even the most broad-minded of us wear.

Tonight he posted something I thought needed to be more widely read, and with his permission I've reprinted it here. It's longish, so follow the link below:

1. There is no such thing as a war against terrorism, capitalized or not. The term "war" is often used rhetorically ? war on drugs, war on corruption ? to signify a concerted effort. Americans, however, tend to enjoy military enterprises. Therefore, the US administration chose to take its own metaphor literally and sent actual soldiers all over the place to fight windmills. They can do nothing about it. Terrorism has existed for ages and will always exist. It is borne out of either despair or deranged minds - look, for instance, at the white supremacist terrorist cell found recently in Texas. Countries fight terrorism with good intelligence and well-trained police forces. Multinational terrorism, additionally, requires cooperation with other countries.
2. Terrorists can't destroy a country, much less the most powerful country in the world. Terrorists are terrorists precisely due to their incapacity to beat you militarily. The only victory they can hope to achieve is to convince you by fear to behave in self-defeating ways. If you look at it from this perspective, in the present case the terrorists are winning. Americans are in panic, they are giving up their own civil rights, freedom of the press is moribund, debt is mounting and the country is deeply divided. Furthermore, the United States have lost most their moral high ground, have alienated their friends and are universally viewed with scorn. Mr Bin Laden, contrarily to the US administration, has long-term goals. He believes if you shoot yourselves repeatedly on the foot it will eventually turn into a gangrene. You are enthusiastically trying to help him prove his point.
3. Since we are into myth-bashing, there is no such thing as a conflict of civilizations or a war being waged against Western civilization. Nobody hates "our freedoms" or "our democracy". This is getting tiresome. You might ask, which Western civilization? Italy, perhaps? Germany? Argentina? Why aren't the terrorists bombing, say, Denmark? As far as I can tell, Denmark is a highly developed country with a hateful amount of freedom and democracy. The conflict is between the United States, an imperial power, and Muslim radicals who oppose them and want them out of their land. More specifically, it is a conflict between two factions of simple-minded warlike religious fundamentalists, both equally viewing themselves as guardians of Good and enemies of Evil, both using a strikingly similar rethoric. Each move on one side fuels the other side. It is Israelis vs. Palestinians in a planetary scale. Most of the world just stand in the sidelines, perplexed. Common people, Muslims included, just want to live in peace.
4. There is also the myth of moral behavior. Individuals have morals; countries have interests. Lying, for instance, is frowned upon at the individual level, but is usual - and sometimes even required - at government level. Americans tend to believe their country always acts morally. They are dead wrong. The United States has always done simply what was judged best for its own interests. Other countries, of course, do exactly the same. The problem here is that, since the average American is both highly idealistic and ill-informed, his country's imperial pursuits have to be disguised, for internal consumption, under a cloak of righteousness. Others are not fooled by that, which gives rise to a gap of perception. Although personally I don't believe so, invading Iraq may yet prove to be the right move in geopolitical terms ? after all, many of Mr Reagan's blunders eventually turned into successes. However, to pretend ? and to actually believe - it was done for humanitarian reasons is ridiculous.
5. My impression is that 9/11 gave the neocons in the US administration a great pretext to test their own theories of world domination. They are driven by greed and/or religious fundamentalism, but in order to succeed they must keep the American people in a permanent state of fear. This is not such a difficult task, given the earnest help of the American media and the fact that Americans are naturally prone to be suspicious of foreigners. However, what is really remarkable is that this whole mess is not furthering the American empire a single inch. You already had an empire, you know. It was based on cultural, economical and political leverage. Although its underlying aim, as it is proper of empires, was to extract economical benefits from other countries, it was nonetheless benign ? which means it could probably have gone on forever. What the present US administration is doing right now is trade the whole deck of cards for a single ace: military dominance. Let's not call it immoral, since morality never had anything to do with it. It is simply stupid.