Not that I'm a full-blooded advocate of The Ends Justify The Means (even though my avatar IS rebel with an AK
), morally speaking, I see no difference between the force applied by market capitalism or totalitarian dictatorships on the general populace, nor in their corresponding counter-forces of crime, terrorism, and anarchistic warlordism. If Bush can enact an amendment that specifically disenfranchises a certain subsect of Americans (as compared to his indirect defunding of most necessary social services, which doesn't specifically disenfranchise, but fucks us ALL up - except those who can just write a check for hospital visits), then he's essentially justified just as extreme reactions.
Who can blame the Tamil Tigers or the Pakistani military after what the Brits did to the whole region? Or Likud and Hamas after the Third Reich and the closing of British and American borders to Jews? It's all justified - that's not the way to go about stopping it. You can't just say people should lay down their arms because they're fighting legitimate grievances using the same tactics as their oppressors before them.
Hmm, I guess that's my point: They're using the exact same tactics. After all, those tactics have been proven to work. Either everybody's justified or everybody's equally to blame.
You see the national guard firing on protestors (or simply the LAPD), and then suddenly there's riots in the streets. You see civil rights leaders getting assassinated, and suddenly they're replaced by more and more radical figureheads. You fight a foreign war for purely self-serving economic reasons that kills more civilians than the proported evil dictator himself, and
damn straight you're gonna see car bombs outside your embassy. Are they wrong for doing so? Fuck no, I say!