The War on Terror
By: Corbin Wright
How do you fight the war on terrorism? Are the present-day terrorists similar to those militaristic antagonists that we had to face in the past? I don’t believe so. There are two basic differences between them. The military antagonist of the past, such as the Nazis and the Communists, always had a country which they could call home. Today’s terrorists don’t have a particular country which they can owe allegiance . They are much more global in their outreach. As a result, it’s was much easier to combat our militaristic antagonists in the past because we could always concentrate are basic efforts in combativeness against a particular country in a specific geographical location. Today our concentration has to extend itself world-wide in scope. The other difference between our militaristic antagonists of the past and those of the present-day are that those of the past didn’t believe in God, or thought they were God, and those of today do believe in God, or actually think they are doing the Will of God in committing their acts of violence. This suggests that these terrorists in the present have a much higher motivational purpose in committing their acts of violence than those of the past did. Therefore, I believe, it’s going to be harder to discourage the present-day terrorists from engaging in their activities, no matter what methods one uses, than it did to discourage our past antagonists.
Now how are we combating the present-day terrorism? We’re doing it in a number of ways. We’re trying to do it through education, by disrupting their financial transferences, and by military means. But the most visible and highly prolific means of combating this form of terrorism is through military power. This basically is the same form of prevention that we have used to combat armed conflict in the past. We generally use arms against arms until our enemy either surrenders or is killed. If he surrenders, our enemy is brought before a court of justice to be tried for his crimes against humanity. If he is found guilty, he is given a long prison term, or executed, according to the severity of the crime. This is how it has been done in the past, and how it is being done now. But is the present system the best way to combat present-day terrorism?
I don’t believe it is, because the terrorist’s mind–set is quite different from those of yesteryear. I believe that we have to find some way in which we can get into their mind-set. In other words, we have to listen to them, understand them, and to hear what they’re really thinking. Imprisoning them won’t change their minds because, unlike their predecessors, they believe they’re doing the Will of God. Most would rather die than surrender, but if they do surrender, they’ll still never change their minds. And this attitude tends to run throughout their entire family, from the infant to the adult.. So the only way to counteract this kind of thinking is to listen intently to them and then try to share our thoughts with them on the situation, and perhaps then together we might find a way to constructively improve our society without resorting to violence. Some might call this appeasement, but I call it a more constructive alternative, since the current approach doesn’t seem to be working. Of course, they’ll always be hardheads on both sides of the divide that will try to resort to violence to change people’s minds, but with more constructive dialogue as I suggested above, this lunatic fringe should become less and less influential and would have to be dealt with through our ordinary legal channels.
George W. Bush has stated that the War in Iraq is the central part of the War on Terrorism, but this war doesn’t seem to be going very well. There are many deaths of Iraqi civilians each day, and the Central Government doesn’t seem to be able to stop it. Some say at this point we should start to leave Iraq and go in a different direction. After all, it seems that the Iraqis are becoming the sacrificial lambs in our war against terrorism. George W. Bush say that our sudden departure would be a disaster. Maybe in the beginning it would, but I wonder, because looking back at what happened in Vietnam, when we unceremoniously left that country many years ago, it seems that today you never hear about any violence coming out of that country
Corbin Melvin Wright was born in New York City in 1931, grew up on Long Island, graduated from Roanoke College in Virginia with a BA in Political Science, and from New York Theological Seminary with a Masters in Religious Education. He worked as an accountant in NYC for 21 yrs. and as an English teacher and Christian counselor in Argentina for 23 years. He was married twice, widowed once, & has no children, E-mail address (corbinwr@yahoo.com).