The real trouble with
terrorism isn't the number of people it kills (since until now anyway, it has
killed very few), but instead the reaction it provokes from democracies.
Almost always, when a democracy suffers an act of terrorism, it responds with
force. And, again, almost always, this response only encourages more
terrorism. This tragically consistent dynamic suggests that it would be
wise for us to begin considering other responses to terrorism.
Democratic
societies generally respond to acts of terrorism in very predictable
ways. First, the government (with shrill assistance from the news media,
political pundits, etc.) attempts to determine who was behind the act of
terrorism, and to hunt down and imprison (or kill) those associated with the
act. Second, the government cracks down on it's own citizens. It
provides for additional monitoring of people's electronic conversations, travel
patterns, and buying habits. It also
strengthens its law enforcement capabilities and provides for
tighter borders. Third, both the government and a large fraction
of the public become openly suspicious of anyone looking like, sharing a
religion with, or otherwise having similarities to the terrorists.
All of
these are all understandable responses to an attack. They may even be
culturally or evolutionarily ingrained in us - given their utility for dealing
with many identifiable cohesive outside threats. That said, these
responses are almost the worst way possible to deal with terrorism.
Since
Sept. 11, 2001, most of the concern with regard to terrorism has focused on
Muslims (despite the fact that almost all terrorist acts in the Western world
prior to Sept. 11, 2001 were perpetrated by white non-Muslim males). As a
result many people around the world (not just in America) have become suspicious
and fearful toward Muslims. These attitudes make it harder for Muslims to
live happy productive lives, and make it harder for them to integrate into
non-Muslim societies. As a result, countries with minority Muslim
populations risk alienating members of their Muslim communities, and thus
creating more terrorists - the very worst possible result.
Furthermore,
attempting to attack terrorists directly always involves killing, investigating,
or imprisoning a certain number of non-terrorist civilians. This is
because terrorists do not field identifiable military units - instead they hide
within larger non-terrorist communities. Non-terrorist civilians don't
like it when innocent family members or friends are killed, imprisoned, or
otherwise persecuted. As a result, some of these non-terrorist
civilians become radicals and provide the next generation of terrorist
recruits. Democracies think that they're deterring terrorism when
they take forceful action against terrorists, but in all actuality they're only
strengthening and encouraging the terrorists.
For
example, America's war against terrorism has displaced and killed thousands
of non-terrorist Muslims. As a result, Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as
the chief terrorist recruitment and training center (and Iraq does a much better
job of it). In fact, the war in Iraq is exactly what the 9/11 terrorists
(and their masters) said they wanted to produce. They knew that if they
could provoke a forceful reaction from America, that that reaction would only
swell the ranks of the terrorists, and that the result would be a downward
spiral that weakened America and strengthened the forces of Islamic
extremism. Sadly, they got their wish.
The unfortunate fact that a
forceful reaction only makes terrorism into a more powerful threat is not the
only negative that results from the democratic response to terrorism. The
forceful response also incurs a high cost to the populations of
democracies. Wars, government crackdowns, new spy programs and the like
all cost large amounts of taxpayer money. Furthermore, some of them
directly impinge upon the quality of life of the citizens of democracies (think
electronic monitoring of conversations, names accidentally added to
no-fly-lists, detention without a trial, etc.).
Since the traditional
democratic response to terrorism has proven to be successful only at encouraging
more terrorism,.perhaps we should consider alternative responses. Our
forceful responses to terrorism target people, but most terrorists claim to be
willing to die for their ideology. Furthermore, they consistently show
that they're more than willing to watch many of the innocent civilians in their
communities die in order to gain new angry supporters for their extreme
ideologies. Therefore, since targeting people doesn't work, perhaps we
should consider targeting the ideologies themselves.
The most significant
acts of terrorism today are perpetuated by Islamic fanatics, so maybe we
can deter them by threatening Islam itself. A few people have
suggested bombing Mecca to accomplish this, but the problem with that strategy
is that it is a one-time thing. If we threaten Mecca as a response to
Islamic terrorism, and then we are attacked, we have to either follow-through
and ignite the Islamic world, or show our threat to be a hollow one.
Instead of something so drastic, we need to think of a threat that is limited,
but still a significant enough challenge to the terrorist ideology to be
effective.
Suppose we began declaring the home town of any convicted
terrorist a conversion zone, and making a concerted effort to ship
missionaries and religious books to the region in an attempt to convert as
many people as possible to a non-Muslim religion. We could even focus
these efforts against the terrorist's extended family. Obviously this
strategy might incur the wrath of the local Muslim government, and might enrage
the Islamic world. These costs might make the strategy
untenable. But, for a terrorist who lives in a Western country already,
such a strategy might be possible.
We could also begin dropping
pornographic pictures of Muslim women having graphic sex with non-Muslim men on
the home towns of any identified terrorist. Muslim extremists are very
opposed to pornography - particularly pornography featuring Muslim women.
Furthermore, it's a matter of pride for men in many cultures to keep their women
away from outside men. If a Muslim extremist knew that committing a
terrorist act would result in his town being inundated in such filth, maybe he
would he would think twice. We could even take this one step further, and
begin offering large cash payments and political asylum to women from
his town (and better yet, women from his extended family) who were willing
to pose for such pictures.
In a similar manner, we could cover his
town in pig offal - focusing particularly on the terrorist's mosque and on
his family's home. Or, we could drop cartoons on the terrorist's home
region - depicting the terrorist as a stupid weakling who has a secret desire
for both homosexual sex and sex with animals - that when the poor guy made
it to Heaven he just couldn't get it up for any of the virgins
there.
Pride and ideology are important to almost everyone - but
terrorists value them more than they value life itself. We need to find
ways to begin attacking these things if we are ever to succeed in deterring
terrorism.
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