How to Defeat Terrorism
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
I just finished the latest manifesto on ChangeThis, How to Defeat Terrorism. I agree with all the points of the author, but find it hard to wrap my head around one key point: public trust in the authorities. Benjamin Kuipers states that if the public has trust in its police and government that they will turn in terrorists. In a Saddam lead Iraq, or in similar oppressed nations with dictators, how much trust does the public have?
One of his simple strategies for defeating terrorism is ”avoid getting killed by them; make clear that overwhelming power is available, but avoid using it;”
This method worked during the Cold War. We essentially sat back, made our military force clear and demonstrated to the world that a free and open society was something they too wanted. After 50 or so years, the Berlin wall came down and communism began to crumble in Europe and Asia. Of course the U.S.S.R. were not terrorists, but terrorists are not nations.
Is the answer to sit back, restrained, for the next 50 years? Hope and pray that time, patience and diplomacy will solve these issues? I don’t know. I know what we are doing now isn’t going to solve anything. As Mr. Kuipers states, it becomes an endless cycle and plays right into the hands of terrorists.
The real goal is to provoke massive retaliation. The tiny group of terrorists who actually committed the act may escape entirely, may take casualties, or may even be entirely destroyed, but the larger terrorist movement feeds on the retaliation. The important thing (from the terrorists’ perspective) is for the massive retaliation to harm many people in the general population, even among their own supporters.
The point is to incite the authorities to act in a way that erodes the people’s trust in them. The people lose trust, the terrorists are seen as freedom-fighters, and they gain support, cover, strength, and freedom of action.
Download the full manifesto