To End Terror

To end terrorism, the first step is to recognize what DOESN'T work. We might think that Israel's experiences of the past forty-five years had adequately proven that a war of attrition and tit-for-tat retaliatory bombings only increase the problem. Apparently not. The Bush Administration and our military in Iraq foolishly pursue the same worn-out methods that work well against standing armies, but fail miserably against hidden terrorist militias. Every bystander hit -- and there are over 10,000 now from the Iraq war -- generates a laundry list of friends and relatives who are now our enemies.

Instead, the war on terrorism must be a war fought in propaganda -- we should be doing everything possible to control the image of the United States abroad. There should be a Barnes and Noble being constructed on every street-corner of Baghdad. New schools with freely donated (but carefully pro-Western) textbooks should be springing up BEFORE Halliburton starts plumbing for oil. We should be dropping crates of food aid (which cost a lot less than bombs) which also are loaded with walkmen, DVD players, and Nintendo gameboys. For real-world evidence of this approach, look at the difference between the punitive treatment of Germany after WW1, and the gracious treatment of Japan after WW2 -- results: Hitler's rise to power in Germany, largely on a platform of restoring German pride, while Japan is now one of our staunchest allies, mostly because we sold them on our values. If you short-circuit the recruitment and fund-raising efforts of terrorism, you do REAL damage to the infrastructure of terrorism. Pity that Bush seems too attached to his cowboy mentality to figure that out.