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Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has been in a supposed
struggle against what it calls "terrorism." The administration
sought to counter the 9/11 attacks by initially invading Afghanistan, which
was run by the Taliban and harbored Al Qaeda. Bush then expanded the
strategy by identifying three countries -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- as
part of an "axis of evil, aiming to threaten the peace of the
world." He then went on to threaten the peace of the world by
attacking Iraq, maintaining a constant stream of threats against Iran, all
the while burning the bridges to our important allies. The invasion of
Iraq, which of course had nothing to do with 9/11, has become one of the
most catastrophic foreign policy disasters in this country's history and
has kept the U.S. army in the streets of Baghdad and Fallujah to fight an
undefined enemy for an undefined period of time in order to accomplish an
undefined mission.
And now, Republican presidential candidates and fanatical figures such
as Horowitz, Podhoretz, Dershowitz and Pipes warn us about
"Islamofascists," a term invented as a consequence of a pathetic
attempt to liken those who attacked us 9/11 or Iraqis who are fighting the
invaders on their own streets to the Third Reich and Nazi Germany. We are
warned that we were attacked because "they hate us for our
freedoms" -- whoever "they" are.
I was 18-years-old when President Bush called Iran as part of an
"axis of evil" and I had moved to the United States from Tehran
on my own two years prior to pursue my own American dream of living in
freedom and having a good life. While I had personally lived under the
repressive rule of mullahs in Iran for 16 years, I couldn't quite
understand why Bush would include Iran in his list of countries that would
threaten the peace of the world when Iran had nothing to do with 9/11 and
the then Iranian President Khatami had publicly condemned the attacks. In
fact, Iran has not attacked another country in more than a hundred years.
But throughout the seven years of the Bush administration, it has become
abundantly clear that the reason that the United States has failed to make
the world a safer place and address the issue of terrorism is due to a
fundamental misunderstanding of what terrorism is and what causes it.
The next president of the United States must drastically shift the way
Americans are led to think about and eradicate terrorism, and in order to
effectively address the issue, he/she must clearly address the following
points as part of the process:
1. Define "Terrorism:" Definition the term so
overused may at first seem unnecessary. But in order for one to effectively
wage a struggle against an element, one first has to define what the
struggle is against. And this is certainly easier said than done. For one,
any linguist would begin by defining "terrorism" as a tactic and
not an ideology, which would mean that one cannot have a war on terrorism
because one cannot have a war on or against a tactic. Furthermore, during
the Reagan Administration, the head of the White House Terrorism Task
Force, Amb. Edward Peck, was tasked to come up with a definition for
"terrorism" that could be used throughout the government. He
produced six, and each time the administration rejected the definitions
because a close reading of each would have included some activities of the
United States. If done correctly, the process of finding the best
definition to articulate and define terrorism should lead to a conversation
about how this country must think about terrorism, and ultimately, what
causes terrorism, which brings us to the next step.
2. Identify its Causes: "They hate us for our
freedoms," we are told. We are also told by implication that all
terrorists are Muslims who have "misunderstood" Islam. And that
phenomenon, combined with the fact that "they hate us for our
freedoms" leads them to commit terrorism. I am not affiliated with any
religion, but the notion that the people of one religion from one region of
the world have a monopoly on terrorism is one of the most bigoted and
racist assertions embraced by the American government since Japanese
internment camps. The currently-used abstract articulation of the causes of
terrorism was produced not to express the facts, but to meet certain
requirements. The narrative was designed, a) to exclude the United States
and all of its closest allies; b) paint all terrorists in history as
Muslims without offending the entire Muslim population in the world; c)
take any elements of rationality out of anything that can be identified as
a "cause" for terrorism; and d) provide the United States with an
implied moral authority and the justification to take preemptive action
against anyone it considers "terrorists." Based on these
requirements, we are left with the explanation of convenience that
terrorists are misled Muslims who attack us because they hate us for our
freedoms have misunderstood their own religion -- which, we are told, is
one of peace.
This explanation may be a nice way of dehumanizing and racially
profiling anyone who has ever committed terrorism, but it is not even a
close way of rationally examining the real causes behind the tactic.
Terrorism can roughly be defined as a tactic used to purposefully kill
civilians. Based on that definition, there are multiple instances
throughout history where either the U.S. or one of its closest allies
committed terrorism. Zionists used terrorism when they were trying to drive
the British out of Palestine and establish their own state - for example by
bombing King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 and assassinating UN mediator
Folke Bernadotte in 1948, among other acts. In addition, the United States
under Reagan mined harbors of Nicaragua to intentionally kill "soft
targets." Unless President Reagan was an Islamofascist who hated the
Nicaraguan Sandinistas for their freedoms, we may have a problem with
Bush's explanation on the causes of terrorism or people who commit it.
3. Address the Causes: A through implementation of step
2 should lead any sensible administration to conclude that every act of
terrorism has its own unique reasons and is often committed by a unique
group of people for a unique set of reasons. Some of such acts may have
been the result of a strategic calculation while others were a pure and
irrational expression of frustration and hatred. But one point becomes
clear, and that is the fact that there is no blanket analysis that can
cover the causes of all acts of terrorism. Each act (or series of acts done
by the same organization) must be individually analyzed and addressed. It
is possible that some will surely be done by fanatics who do in fact
despise the prosperity and fortunes of another society, but the vast
majority of terrorist acts in history -- including the attacks on 9/11 --
have been committed by people who have clearly stated the reasons for their
actions, and they have nothing to do with our freedoms. To dismiss those
confessions and brand all terrorists as confused Muslims with an inherent
desire to cause America harm, for which we bear no responsibility, would be
a self-defeating strategy.
4. Talk to Your Enemies: By not talking to our enemies,
the United States is not isolating those countries; it is isolating itself
and impeding its own effort to truly understand the misgivings foreign
adversaries harbor against the United States. The next president needs to
speak with the leaders of hostile countries without preconditions.
I went to public schools in Iran for 10 years. Under the current regime,
the teachers are told what to teach and are highly encouraged to brainwash
children with as much anti-American rhetoric as possible. So throughout
those years, I heard my teachers express every possible reason one can have
to despise "The Great Satan." However, not once did I ever hear a
teacher suggest that he hated the United States for its freedoms or even
that freedom was a contrary concept to the teachings of any religion. Up to
this day after almost three decades since the Islamic revolution, the
people continue to chant the following words, however hollow they may ring:
"Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic." There are many
repressive countries around the world, and Iran is one of them. But even in
countries where freedom is far from the reach of their citizens, the idea of
freedom is highly embraced as the pillar of any moral society. This piece
has been this blogger's effort to start a long-overdue conversation about
terrorism and offer a framework within which the next president should
begin to address it.
Link to the article on The Huffington Post.
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