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So to this: “we appoint our statesmen to act only in our *best* interests” I say: you speak for yourself, I’m free to cast my vote on whatever basis I choose.

And in speaking for yourself, you say that “morality is not, or should not, be a concern of statesmen“, you’re doing nothing more then telling a little bit about yourself – namely your indifference to killing other people when it suits you.

Apologies for going off-topic. I won’t say more on this in this thread.

Ask yourself why the Scots aren’t running a suicide bombing campaign in London. My answer: A bit of bad history, but no real grievances.

But, if the English started flying zillion dollar high tech gunships over Scottish cities blowing random people to pieces away with 105 mm cannon this might well change. And various old hatreds would be invoked and forgotten historical incidents would develop new life. Hell, they might even say they hate the English for what they are…

But that’s a false dichotomy, at least given my assumption that 99% of human activity is not “rational”.

Look I’m all in favour of trying to understand these people, to see where they get their motivations from, and I’m certainly keen on drifting away from the infantile notion of a Global War On Terrorism. But personally I’d wish to do that without appealing to the concept rationality, which I see as a semantic obstacle rather than anything else.

Duff: “as I have pointed out elsewhere, morality is not, or should not, be a concern of statesmen”

And as I have pointed out elsewhere, that’s a complete load of old cobblers.

No, Jim, with respect, any old pretend ones will do, particularly in this age of mass, distorted news management. And if you are the world’s only super-power, as the USA is, then it is impossible, completely impossible, to *not* give some-one offence, somewhere in the world, even if you do nothing. For a very small example, ask yourself what we English would have to do to assuage the inbuilt resentment of the Scots? Stop breathing, might be the only answer!

‘Shuggy’, you are quite right; to contemplate the destruction of Israel with indifference is not a moral position, but as I have pointed out elsewhere, morality is not, or should not, be a concern of statesmen. If I didn’t already have a hundred other reasons why I never want to be a politician, that one would do. Nevertheless, in the same way that we send our diplomats abroad to lie for us, we appoint our statesmen to act only in our *best* interests. I wouldn’t want to work in the sewer system, but I’m glad some-one shifts my shit whilst I look away with a hankie covering my nose!

As for the rest, I’m equally surprised to be agreeing with Andrew. I think suicide terrorists are primarily rational on their own terms, for the reasons I’ve given above, and these are terms we need to understand. Equally, though, I have no problem condemning their actions as evil, wicked, unforgiveable (worse even than sitting idly by whilst Israel is exterminated) — as anyone who has read other stuff I’ve written would know. I have no problem being unequivocal about right and wrong — and, yes, sometimes communicating that in a totalitarian way (hence the usual disagreement with Andrew). I don’t think we should be negotiating with them, for starters.

But don’t confuse structure with agency here. Any “pseudo-Marxist” analysis I’ve used is to get at the former without making any statement about the latter.

I am sorry, but that is absolute nonsense. I have said nothing about people being fundamentally anything. It is important to understand people on their own terms, as that is the only way that we can understand their actions without performing some kind of essentially duplicitous self-projection. It says nothing about good or bad, but is merely a project for understanding human action.