Military Responses to Terrorism Are Self-Defeating

Terrorism is a kind of psychological warfare, so traditional military force is not a truly effective response. While the attacks in Afghanistan felled the Taliban and yielded some hard information about the Bin Laden network, the threat of terrorism was not greatly reduced. Military threats actually threaten other Middle East relationships, and they only address one of many potential sources of terror weapons. It is important to understand the wide varieties of support for potential terrorists, and to win over the vast majority of those who now seem willing to give terrorists logistical, financial, and moral support. This will indeed be a lengthy task, and a difficult one, because it can not be accomplished primairly by dealing with dictators and power brokers. The task must enlist grass-roots leaders who are often at odds with the power structures of their countries.

Preventing Home-grown Terrorism is a Community-Wide Endeavor

While international terrorism is addressed by the federal government, we must not forget that California communities suffered nearly a dozen home-grown protest bombings in the last decade. Department stores selling animal furs, university research facilities, abortion clinics, and places of worship are frequent targets. Local efforts are needed to prevent such incidents.

There seems to be a consensus among experts that terrorism can't be prevented by surveillance and "target hardening," because there are too many people and too many potential targets involved. Instead, the best hope of eliminating political violence in this country seems to rest with building responsible communities that do not tolerate it. When unions, businesses, churches, schools and neighborhoods maintain open channels of communication that effectively deal with grievences, stay alert to situations that might lead to violence, and engage their own members in effective political action, short-sighted, violent short-cuts are minimized.

But we should all recognize that there are numerous flaws in the democratic body-politic. It takes continuous effort to maintain open, trusting, and mature relationships with groups that are over-stressed, or self-righteous, or impatient with the democratic process. Sometimes resistance to the needs of ethnic or religious minorities might seem calculated to incite them to violent reactions. Public policy should clearly seek to remove these flaws.

State policies need to address concerns that political violence affecting this country may originate in more repressive cultures abroad. It is a paradox that immigrants who are innocent of any connection with terror, and who may be in this country to flee the repression that leads to terror abroad, may become suspect themselves. It is even more unfortunate that the soils nourishing political violence have been fertilized by covert and overt national policies supporting these repressive regimes.

Literature and Websites on Terrorism and Responses