Open Source Enables Terrorist States

chill writes "Where to begin? OpenBSD Journal has a couple of update articles on the business of DARPA cancelling POSSE and OpenBSD's grant. And here is a message from Theo de Raadt, the OpenBSD big cheese, with a quote from a military spokesman. How does '...due to world events and the evolving threat posed by increasingly capable nation-states...' grab you? Does open source and freely available security support terrorism by its very nature?"

Comments

Terrorism is dying..

[Beetjebrak]

--insert obligatory BSD-is-dying blurb here with every instance of BSD replaced by 'Terrorism'--

Extremist definition of Terrorism

[aphor]

The real problem is how the G.W. Administration and the Military defines Terrorist States. It's a dangerous us-and-them attitude that is completely out of date and distorts our relative weaknesses/advantages dealing with "them". If a whole nation-state and most of its people support terrorists and other questionable policy, like nuclear proliferation, then we should take a defensive posture against them. This is no different than the defensive posture against any other potentially threatening nation, like China.

I'm not even going to take the moral high-road here. In pure Machiavellian politics' terms, the best way to neutralize a threat is to become a means to the enemy's ultimate ends. The G.W. hardliners reject this because they refuse to see the humanity of these people. Poor arab states are populated with people who have not learned concepts like "rule-of-law" and "sanctity of human life" and "people have inalienable rights". The poor, uneducated arab hoi-polloi doesn't recognise those particular carrots dangling in front of them. G.W. and his people think that makes it impossible to deal with them. No, that makes it difficult.

What we need is an enlightened policy towards terrorist states that includes the entire spectrum from friendly, stable, peaceful, democratic nations all the way to unpredictable, dangerous, junta-of-the-day, dictatorships. Things like promoting human rights works to pacify entire nations. Promoting the idea of "limits on powers of government" doesn't sit well with dictatorships' ideas on sovreignty, but in a purely Machiavellian tone: it is wisdom.

You hit on a very important concept, but you fail to underline the dangerous truth behind it. The reason things are so tense between the USA and all these poor countries that harbor terrorists is that our societies are so different. We are advancing and delivering a richer curriculum to more and more of our own people, while "they" are getting less and less. The difference, the gap, is widening, and it has as much to do with our advances as it does with their stagnation. The gap is why G.W. and his people feel so frustrated trying to find foreign policy that fits.

G.W.'s foreign policy is a step away from Bill Clinton's "engagement" policy wherein the USA compromised little by little to achieve social and economic footholds in societies with which we have weak diplomatic security. To my knowledge, we contiune that with China. They are an advanced society with much more in common with the USA than others. The tough ones take a couple of generations to make that kind of progress.

Conceded: the older people in the power seats of those nations are just too slow to chnage their attitudes. However, their children, especially their teenagers, are psychologically and developmentally receptive to American doctrine of rights and limited government, etc.. The real crime is that THOSE ARE THE PEOPLE WE SHOOT! We shoot our own opportunities. We shoot ourselves in the foot. If they begin to percieve us as the means to a better life, the support for terrorism will evaporate (over time). Can we wait to deal with immediate threats? Maybe not. Should we undermine our own long-term agenda because we won't be in office to take credit for the success? NO.

The bottom line is that YOU must get OFF YOUR LUMP and vote G.W. out of office. Aside: we must concede the right to keep and bear arms to the rural America that supported G.W. so staunchly.