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Your Most Trusted Source of Foreign
News and Views About the United States
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EDITORIAL
September 16, 2005
The U.N. Security Council has appealed to the governments of the world to adopt laws outlawing the incitement of terrorism. In these times, this monster has become one of the cruelest killers of humanity, and every step must be taken to behead it. But the strategy that the world powers have so far adopted holds no promise whatsoever of achieving this objective. They are increasingly reliant on military, administrative and legal measures that, at best, only scratch the surface, leaving the evil underneath unscathed and untouched. The battle against terrorism has thus predictably remained unwon.
Their current anti-terror strategy could even prove counterproductive,
as it has in
That this charge against the ousted dictator
has proven untrue is not the issue here. At issue is whether his ouster
has led precisely to what the U.S.-led invaders claim to have set out to
stop. Whatever else his sins,
The point is that terrorism doesn’t reside in garrisons or barracks. It lives in the mind. Hence, it cannot be overcome with military, administrative or legal means. It essentially involves a battle for minds, and can be fought effectively and triumphantly only on that plane. There is no other way out. But this hardly seems to have decisively figured into the calculus of the world powers, and forms no noticeable part of their anti-terror strategy. As President Pervez Musharraf put it succinctly in his U.N. address, “the motives behind terrorist acts … may not justify terrorism, but they do explain it,” and hence they must be understood and addressed. But this truism doesn’t seem to have dawned compellingly on the protagonists of the war on terror. They remain unremittingly glued to their deeply flawed strategy. So much so, they have equated even legitimate struggles for freedom with terrorism.
—UNITED NATIONS VIDEO: President Pervez Musharraf Address to U.N. General Assembly, Calls for New Approach to War on Terror, September 14, 00:08:30
The killing of innocents is inhuman and unacceptable, whether the murderer
is in uniform or wearing a mask over his face. And what can you expect
when you give complete impunity for killers in uniform to savage people
seeking freedom, but provide no means for people to attain their legitimate
aspirations of freedom? Can you reasonably hope the violence and bloodletting
will then cease? Certainly not.
To defeat terrorism, as President Musharraf put it so aptly, political and
economic injustice must be addressed. This should become the dominant element
of the anti-terror war strategy. Otherwise, the Western protagonists are
fighting a losing battle, with the world becoming more violent and bloodied,
as it has since this war began.
