Opinion
Morality, not barbarism, key to fighting terror
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Also by Gerald Cox:
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- Same old strategies won't save republicanism (March 2, 2009)
- Black leaders won't let America's racist heritage go (February 23, 2009)
- ASM constitution will not succeed without students (February 19, 2009)
- Early missteps mar new administration (February 16, 2009)
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As of this writing, an estimated 188 people have been killed as a result of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. Mumbai is an international city, as the victims’ various nationalities attest. A dozen Americans, several Israelis and Britons were among those killed. The attacks struck at the heart of a nation whose political, ethnic, cultural and linguistic pluralism is more controlled cacophony than harmonious symphony.
But if there is a lesson to be learned in the scenes of barbarity offered by the rash of terrorist attacks that has plagued our nascent century, it is that civil morality is far more sustainable than hate.
In his usual timely fashion, President-elect Barack Obama named his security team on Monday. In the wake of Mumbai’s incredibly organized terrorist attack, Obama and his security team, headlined by right-of-center foreign policy wonks like Sen. Hillary Clinton, would do well to heed the lessons offered by our experiences with the barbarity of terrorism.
The barbarism feeds upon fear and hatred; it festers in the open wounds of instability and poverty. It is sustained by suffering and oppression. Al-Qaida’s haven in Afghanistan was possible only due to the deep-seated hatred of extreme Islamic factions toward American culture, as well as Afghanistan’s unstable and backward government.
A wise man once said that men who are unable to control themselves have no business controlling a nation. Gandhi’s words ring true and complement these attacks in reminding us of an incredible American failure. Our sustained response to the post-9/11 world was filled with error and ideology. Thought was subordinated to fear. Our leaders acted with an impunity and ignorance that had us looking back toward the violence and destruction of the crumbling Trade Center towers and not forward to sustainable solutions. We could not control ourselves. We lost our sense of morality amid a sense of entitlement and power.
Those who practice the barbarity of terrorism offer themselves and their causes as a means of sustenance in societies where poverty is pervasive and infrastructure is insufficient. The terrorist group Hezbollah, for instance, prides itself on its ability to provide health care, marriage arrangements and education to many of Lebanon’s poor and disenfranchised.
Yet civil morality will outlast the hatred of such groups. Even now, the popularity of groups like al-Qaida is waning. Their proclivity for killing civilians in Iraq made their efforts there unsustainable. People won’t stomach senseless violence for long, and events like the Mumbai attacks make it increasingly more difficult for states to turn a blind eye to such groups.
Families would much rather have an American university offer their son or daughter a scholarship than be offered a modest stipend from a terrorist group in exchange for their son’s life. One of the first actions by a Secretary of State Clinton should be to declare her intentions to make America the world’s educator vis-à-vis U.S. higher education. Second, a commitment to re-engage in direct diplomacy, even with those we find disagreeable.
Occupying the global moral high ground is essential to security in a world where terrorism has proved so poignant a threat. Obama’s election is the first step in re-establishing the American brand as a symbol of global morality. He represents a renewal and disavowal of America’s unpopular last 8 years. But popularity is fleeting. Just ask Mr. highest-approval-rating-for-a-President-ever himself — George Bush.
When you possess the moral high ground, the world is drawn to your brand or — at the very least — does not actively seek to destroy it. But our nation’s brand has been tarnished with images from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. If Obama wants to reclaim the moral high ground we have lost over the last decade, he would do well disassociate his administration from these images of American barbarism.
The lesson we must learn is that our security is very much linked to our image abroad. Could a kinder, gentler, more likable India have avoided the senseless violence that has recently shaken its democracy? Probably not. But will it be harder for future terrorists to find a safe haven from which to organize attacks on American soil if the American brand is held in global regard? Certainly.
An emphasis on civil morality, in lieu of American military dominance, would send a strong signal to a world that has grown weary of American dominance, yet eager at the promise offered by the new administration. Let’s just hope the right-of-center crew President-elect Obama is gathering can stomach such a concept.
Gerald Cox (gcox@wisc.edu) is a senior majoring in economics and East Asian languages and cultures.
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Rampant poverty + blind faith = terrorists
Morality has nothing to do with the gears of this society, that society, or any political institution since the dawn of time. Even the Roman Catholic Church, the self-proclaimed gold standard of morality, has a poor moral track record.
Submit or die, that’s the choice given infidels by Islam - morality plays no part.
” due to the deep-seated hatred of extreme Islamic factions toward American culture”
Absolutely right. The war will go on as long as American culture allows freedom of and from religion, equality for and education of women, gay rights, blasphemy, apostasy, bikinis, liquor, etc.
PS. As a blaspheming apostate who enjoys his liquor I must side with American culture in this war.
do some research ^ss hat, Osama is a multi-millionaire, and most of the middle to upper level terrorist are well educated and middle to upper class. In fact, the terrorist in India used blackberries to coordinate their attacks. They are not dumb monkeys with sticks that could be otherwise used. You think the US alone could stop terror?
Go look up Darfur, Black September, Lebanon,etc… most of these movements start as nationalistic movements, once they have conquered their initial target they face an issue, they have no means to govern. How do they fix this? claim an external threat and the West is the easiest to claim. So once in a while they attack the west to convince their people this is the case. Most South American and African crack pots don’t realize the West could care less.
The idea of poverty leading to terror is one of the most debunked ideas in modern political and military science.
you fail good sir
(yes on prop 45)
11:13, so suicide bombers are recruited from the wealthy and educated, from the ones with hope for the future? Perhaps the terrorist leadership is wealthy, but the boots on the ground, the true believers, arise from the downtrodden, hopeless, and poor.
Sir, then, why are so many “terrorist” hotspots in the most poor regions of the world? Sudan, Waziristan, Indonesia…
Why was the IRA able to cause terror for years? Because they, the educated well-off leadership hungry for political clout and notoriety, were able to convince the hopeless populus (the ones with blind faith; not religious faith, but a faith in a particular movement, often times with religious parallels)that the British were the cause of their pain and economic distress.
Fail? I think not. Suck it, noob.
Def: Peace Brief interludes within American history in which altruisticly deluded Democrats, myopic isolationists, and 5th column marxists allow our murderously determined enemies to re-arm.
“The lesson we must learn is that our security is very much linked to our image abroad.” Good luck with that delusion, Gerald! It worked so well for the right honourable Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin! England was “looking good” as the rest of Europe was overrun by the Nazis. Yes, Gerald. We will “have peace in our obama time” soon.
I’m sure Al Queda will admire our improved image, in obama’s usual timely fashion, as they joyfully slit our throats and shout Allahu Akbar. Will you have the courage then to admit your naivete, Gerald? And take up arms against them to right the incredibly misguided wrongs that you have espoused, supported, and promulgated?
Will you?
Invictus Maneo
“Why was the IRA able to cause terror for years?”
Religion.
Gruesome new evidence also emerged Thursday suggesting that some of the six people killed at the Jewish center in Mumbai had been treated savagely. Some of the bodies appeared to have strangulation marks and wounds on their bodies did not come from gunshots or grenades, the police said.
If ONLY the Jews had been more moral!
@1:05 http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i39/39b01001.htm
As he sees it, the West suffers from an excess of toleration for those who do not share its tradition of tolerance. “We believe that — ‘we’ means the political elite — that all cultures are equal,” he says. “I believe this is the biggest disease today facing Europe… . We should wake up and tell ourselves: You’re not a xenophobe, you’re not a racist, you’re not a crazy guy if you say, ‘My culture is better than yours.’ A culture based on Christianity, Judaism, humanism is better. Look at how we treat women, look at how we treat apostates, look at how we go with the separation of church and state. I can give you 500 examples why our culture is better.”
He acknowledges that “the majority of Muslims in Europe and America are not terrorists or violent people.” But he says “it really doesn’t matter that much, because if you don’t define your own culture as the best, dominant one, and you allow through immigration people from those countries to come in, at the end of the day you will lose your own identity and your own culture, and your society will change. And our freedom will change — all the freedoms we have will change.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122792271890965883.html
What he said!
4:05, think for yourself. From your opinion source:
“The poverty rate is 28 percent among the Hezbollah militants and 33 percent for the population. In terms of education the Hezbollah fighters are more likely to have attended secondary school than are people in the general population (47 versus 38 percent). The results suggest that poverty is inversely related, and education positively related, to the likelihood that someone becomes a Hezbollah fighter.”
Wow, only 28% poverty and 47% high school… that sounds like a pack of rich geniuses to me…
Egyptian cleric Hassan Abu Al-Ashbal has a message for Barack Obama: convert to Islam, or else. We’re eager for death, yadda yadda, you know the drill.
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1934.htm
1:05,
Youre a moron. Study after study with loads of research demonstrate that the rank and file of terror groups are in fact well educated and more wealthy than the populations you come from. Those who committ the attacks are chosen based on level of intelligence and ability to adapt well on foreign soil (something educated ppl do better than the unedcuated).
Youre a moron. The reason terror attacks happen in poorer countries is not because the attackers are poor but because poorer countries tend to have less security operations to root our terrorism and thus terrorist organizations cannot be detected as easily. Terror groups flock to poor nations for this reason. Do some actual thinking about the subject.
7:41, the populations from which male terrorists come from include women. In these countries, women are less educated, so your statistics are skewed. Additionally, I am not arguing the leadership’s intelligence, because they obviously are capable of making anyone do anything.
As for your assertion that terrorist flock to less secure locations: I say that any outlaws do the same thing. The area north of the Grand Canyon is a hot spot for polygamy… not terrorists. Las Vegas, in the middle of a desert, became a hot spot for gambling… not terrorists. You still have to answer why these outlaws in POOR, UNEDUCATED countries become terrorists… not polygamists or gamblers.
No terror attacks in the USA since 9-11?
I blame Bush.
Perhaps better “Media Narratives” would help?
Media Narratives Feed Terrorist Fantasies http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122818128240470999.html
In the spring of 2005, Newsweek ran with a thinly sourced item about the Quran being flushed down a Guantanamo toilet. Result: At least 15 people were killed in Afghan riots.
Newsweek later retracted the story, which was the right thing to do but also, in its way, exceptional. Compare that to the refusal of French reporter Charles Enderlin and his station, France 2, to retract or even express doubt about his September 2000 report on Mohammed al-Durrah, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli soldiers during an exchange of gunfire in the Gaza Strip — an exchange Mr. Enderlin did not witness.
In an exhaustive piece in the June 2003 issue of the Atlantic, James Fallows observed that the evidence that the boy could not have been shot by an Israeli bullet is overwhelming, while the evidence that the entire incident was staged is, at the very least, impressive. In France, the story has been the subject of various lawsuits. In Israel, however, and throughout the Muslim world, Durrah became the poster child for a five-year intifada that took several thousand lives.
Definitely someone who should have been larded with bacon and buried in pig skin.
BURNSVILLE, Minn. (FOX 9)—One of the five men suspected to be a suicide bomber who killed himself and 29 others last October in Somalia, was buried Wednesday at a Burnsville Cemetery.
FOX 9 has learned DNA tests have confirmed Shirwa Ahmed was one of five suicide bombers who killed himself and 29 others last October in northern Somalia.
He is also a Minnesotan and a naturalized U.S. citizen.
The FBI helped return Ahmed’s remains to his family.
At a Twin Cities cemetery in Burnsville Wednesday afternoon, the suspected suicide bomber was laid to rest.
Shirwa Ahmed, 27, was given a traditional Muslim burial.
Family and friends did not wish to talk about the circumstances of his death.
Community activist Omar Jamal is one of the few who will.
“Honestly I look at him seriously as a victim and not as a criminal, I think of him as a young victim,” says Jamal….
7:41,
You’re missing my point; terror groups choose un-secure nations to draft people into their organization. Ex. Osama fled Saudi Arabia and went to a virtually lawless Afghanistan to turn ppl into terrorists. Im sure this is also a place that would be conducive to an organized polygamist leader as well but things are so anarchic in certain places that wealthy potential terror leaders cherry pick poor nations to start their groups.
A prominent British Muslim announced the other day that, when the United Kingdom becomes a Muslim state, non-Muslims will be required to wear insignia identifying them as infidels.
Morality? They don’t have it!
Iraqi officials rescued a 15 year-old female bomber chained to a fence at an Iraqi checkpoint. The young woman, Rania al-Ambaki, has a low IQ and thought the vest was for back pain.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/05/eveningnews/main4651268.shtml?source=mostpop_story
Family members, including her husband, she said, had helped her put it on.
“…will it be harder for future terrorists to find a safe haven from which to organize attacks on American soil if the American brand is held in global regard? Certainly.”
I always love the “Bush has made us less safe” narrative. The fact that we’ve suffered not a single terrorist incident since 9/11 seems not to bother the Kool-Aid crowd.
Unfortunately, Mr. Cox, your florid, sophomoric prose serves only to disguise some really addle-headed reasoning. It is precisely BECAUSE of our muscular stance against terrorism that we’ve been kept safe.
Appeasement DOES NOT WORK!! Do yourself a favor and learn some history in school.