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"Today, our nations are challenged once again," Bush said. "We're threatened by ruthless enemies unlike others we have faced. Terrorist groups hide in many countries. They emerge to kill the innocent. They seek weapons to kill on a massive scale."

"We must fight terrorism on many fronts," he added. "We must stay on the offensive until the terrorist threat is fully and finally defeated. To win the war on terror, we must hunt a scattered and resourceful enemy in dark corners around the world."

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My concern is that Bush sees this as a straightforward battle of military force against other military force, rather than a battle with multi-pronged strategies that focus more on the economic and social milieu in which the tendency for terrorists to emerge is enhanced rather than diminished.

"But there is another tremor shaking the Arab world. This one is being set off by a group of courageous Arab social scientists, who decided, with the help of the United Nations, to begin fighting the war of ideas for the Arab future by detailing just how far the Arab world has fallen behind and by laying out a progressive pathway forward. Their first publication, the Arab Human Development Report 2002, explained how the deficits of freedom, education and women's empowerment in the Arab world have left the region so behind that the combined G.D.P. of the 22 Arab states was less than that of a single country — Spain. Even with limited Internet access in the Arab world, one million copies of this report were downloaded, sparking internal debates.

Tomorrow, in Amman, Jordan, these Arab thinkers will unveil their second Arab Human Development Report, which focuses on the need to rebuild Arab "knowledge societies." The report is embargoed until then, but from talking with the authors I sense it will be another bombshell."

edited to add a link to a .pdf of the report istself http://www.undp.org/rbas/ahdr/english.html

[ 19 October 2003: Message edited by: banquosghost ]

I've long held that the majority of U.S. schools exist to teach students what to think, not how to think. Controversy is shunned - it might offend the parents. Give-and-take between teachers and students is limited by large class sizes and discipline issues. Teachers themselves have learned by rote, and tend to teach by rote. At the University level, profs complain about this all the time; many students are afraid to ask questions, don't like to take part in activities, are uncomfortable with being asked to come up with their own arguments.

Now, anyone who's been around a three year old child knows that this is not a natural condition. ("Why? Why? Whyyyyyyyy?") Children are naturally curious and apt to challenge authority one way or another. Somewhere along the line, this intellectual openness is being consistently shut off and shut down.

I complained about the "Daily Brainwash" in another thread - U.S. schools require kids to Pledge Allegiance every morning, and the textbooks are full of patriotic rubbish. (Conservatives tend to complain that there's not enough patriotic rubbish if a book dares touch on some of the less shining moments of U.S. history.) It's also been my experience that teachers could be very dogmatic; I remember telling my father that I couldn't use his neat math shortcut in my homework, because they'd grade off if I didn't do the problem the way they wanted it done.

Now add in the Power of Peer Pressure, plus of course the constant Messages from Mass Media, and you've got a perfect storm of: don't ask, don't challenge, just do what you're told the way you're told and keep your head down.

Of course, there are all sorts of outbreaks of rebellion, especially once adolescence hits. Here the opposite side of the problem starts to show up strongly: total cynicism. Having seen through many of the lies they're spoon-fed, the kids are ready for something new. But what? For every touted Truth, someone is shouting Lie! It doesn't help that the vested interests have organizations like the Heritage Foundation that exist to pump out plausible-sounding propaganda with strings of credentials behind it.

So the usual choice is: (a) believe whatever suits the prejudices with which you grew up; (b) believe whatever strikes your personal fancy and pisses off the Establishment; or (c) believe in nothing much and develop a rather nihilistic attitude. Many people start at (a), go through various different kinds of (b), and end up somewhere around (c), or back to (a) out of sheer exhaustion.

What's lacking in this process, I believe, is a firm grounding in the tools necessary to weigh one claim against another, according to the evidence, and reach a well-reasoned conclusion. Logic is not on the standard curriculum. Indeed, using your brains to question is often actively discouraged by some powerful forces. "You gotta have FAITH!" - in whatever system the speaker happens to be selling.

Thus, for example, people who've learned how scientists can be paid to lie for a tobacco company are not inclined to believe something just because a scientist says it. That's good! That's healthy. But they lack the tools to go one step further, and see why some "scientific studies" are quite credible, and other "scientific studies" are probably complete hooey. They don't have any practice at saying: what is science? what are its rules? therefore, what is good science? can we trust things to be true if we know they're good science? how reliable is that for making life decisions?

People tend to have good bullshit detectors these days, because they're barraged by advertising. However, just as the presence of too much magnetism throws off a compass, the presence of too much bullshit - the Big Lie, so to speak - tends to throw off our common-sense assessments of things. As a result, I think we need to have, in our daily lives, more sophisticated tools - those things called critical thinking.

I've gone off into a long yammer about this, I know, but I really feel strongly about the subject. You can't fight propaganda with counter-propaganda; it just leaves people not knowing what to believe, or choosing whatever sounds nicest to them. So you need an alternative to fear-mongering and manipulation and all those other propaganda tactics, and I think this requires facts and evidence - things that people can use to prove to themselves, a many times as necessary, that something does indeed work this way and not that way.

So, uh, what has this got to do with terrorism?

Well, for starteres, it takes a certain amount of fanaticism to be a terrorist. Anyone who's willing to count the bodies of kids as "OK in the pursuit of the greater good" has fanatic written all over 'em, and I include the U.S. military and their damn "collateral damage". People who question, however, don't make good fanatics, rather by definition.

For another, people who question are more likely to look toward "root causes". When attacking the symptoms consistently fails to work, they're more likely to say, "Hey! This isn't working! Shouldn't we try something else?" What's more, they're less likely to stop at the first bullshit they're handed ("they hate our freedoms") or even at the first plausible-sounding explanation ("the root cause is poverty"). People who question go on and on, getting an ever more sophisticated understanding, and developing ever more innovative ways to deal with such issues.

Naturally, I am of the opinion that people who think and question will be more likely to reach my own conclusions than to go with, say, the neo-con view. (Snarky aside: because self-evidently the neo-cons neither think nor question.) But if I'm wrong - a possibility I do try to keep in mind, despite my lecturing tendencies - so much the better that many other minds should be thoughtfully working on these problems, and maybe finding better solutions than mine.

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I've long held that the majority of U.S. schools exist to teach students what to think, not how to think.

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Time has a nasty habit of butting against mythology and experiences that contradict a mythology can either be accepted (and delute the mythology) or be ignored, and the mythology becomes more and more disconnected with reality. So events such as Slavery, the Civil War, de facto Apartheid in the South and Vietnam (to name a few problem areas that aren't so controversial or open to interpretation) are best not dealt with too critically, because they weaken the mythology, which, being personally owned, also weaken the individual's self-worth. For this reason, people become used to facing an unpleasant reality with denial, and critical thinking is never engaged because everyone, politician, business leader, teacher and student are all complicite in the denial.

This is a gross generalisation I'm making; not all Americans are this way, a huge number are not, a huge number are the most insightful critics Americans have and, in the past, it is precisely these people who have drawn the US away from the excesses to which this lack of critical thinking can lead. But right now, in the aftermath of a relatively violent event, so much more shocking for its cinematic grandeur, this core trait in the American personality is being exploited by Bush and the neo-cons for a variety of reasons which for me, are not yet completely clear.

[ 19 October 2003: Message edited by: Hinterland ]

Hinterland, in particular, you've touched on a point I've never been able to properly articulate as one of my reasons for dislike of American attitudes in general - the tendency of USians to react personally (and usually out of proportion) to complaints about their country, almost as though you were insulting their religion.

The provincialism of USians is something I've also complained about before; I like to use the example of the appalling state of the roads in the western states (haven't been to the ones east of the Mississippi, so can't tell you about those ) compared to British Columbia's - even the Coquihalla or the Sea to Sky are smoother and in better shape than parts of the I-5 in California. For such a car-centered country I have been amazed that they can't even properly maintain their own roads; yet they know no better because so few (compared to the population as a whole) travel beyond the US's borders.

The road thing is symptomatic of a larger problem.

However, I fear we are digressing somewhat.

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Bush did say that the "war" would be fought "on many fronts", but I doubt he was thinking of a get-at-the-root-cause, multifaceted strategy designed to prevent future terrorists from finding "justifiable" motivations to incite others to join their cause - after all, domestic right-wing terrorists in the USA aren't attracting people in great numbers because the majority of Americans feel they still have a democratic stake in the system, or have found other avenues to express their discontent - such as petty crime, excessive buying sprees, workaholism, or what have you.

...I really wish Bush had a better sense of his own drastic limitations.

[ 19 October 2003: Message edited by: Hinterland ]

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...I really wish Bush had a better sense of his own drastic limitations.

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Me too. Most particularly, there needs to be an understanding that weapons of war are terrorist weapons. It is not relevant which side is using them. There are no "good guys" out there dropping or throwing bombs. If you are the target, you feel the terror. Consequently, the "war on terror" is itself terrorizing.

It is not possible to fight terrorism by using terrorism. Mr. Bush and his followers need to understand that. In the long run, Bush and company are making things much, much worse.

[ 19 October 2003: Message edited by: Hinterland ]

Please don't now do what amounts to the equivalent of what the US right did to anyone who spoke out against their belligerent idiocy.

Just because I think the modern Arab and Islam moderate groups and inelligentsia have a vital role to play does not de facto make me an aplogist for Bush and Co.

Edited to add that it's clear no one has bothered to look at either the Friedman article or the UN document I linked to. It's a ray of hope from some Arab and Islam moderates and intelligentsia for whatever it may be worth. If we can find a way to support the people doing these reports, help them find ways of implementing their recommendations...

Or then again we could just keep slagging the indefensible, irresponsible murderous assholes currently inhabiting the seats of power in DC.

You choose.

[ 19 October 2003: Message edited by: banquosghost ]

[ 19 October 2003: Message edited by: banquosghost ]

But the way to stop terrorism is not through putting our firepower in direct contact with theirs. Stopping terrorism and extremism is about not letting tensions, anger, and hunger grow to extents that the cause people to lash out violently.

Most International Development Workers become minor celebrities overseas - people know the work they do, what these people left behind, and how the international development people are helping their country. It's amazing how people in "remote" parts of the world, without much education are actually very familar with international issues.

With this in mind, most Canadian development workers I know overseas display the Maple Leaf somewhere in their classroom, office, or home, a symbol which I suspect will be mean something much more benevolent and positive to the people who see it, than the same flag on a soldier's uniform.

I burst with pride everytime I see one of those white, cloth, bags full of food with "CANADA" stamped on them in red when I am overseas. The International Development worker, and the bags of food are the best propoganda we could possibly hope for.

Consider this, one Tomahawk cruise missile costs $1M... it costs about $15, 000 to train, transport, and sustain a volunteer overseas for 6 months, and for longer periods the cost goes down even further (as the flight only needs to be made once).

1 cruise missile = 66 International Development Workers, with enough money left over to ship several shipping containers full of grain packaged in those white bags = thousands of people who so see Westerners as colleagues, service-providers, technical experts, teachers, customers, or neighbours rather than decadent exploiters.

13 Billion in funds for Iraq War = 866667 of trained, fed, and equipped International Development Workers. = the potential to create several million people, disinclined to terrorism.

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Originally posted by nonesuch:
How to defeat terrorism?
Jesus had the answer: Throw bread at your enemies.
Or, maybe, just stop making enemies?

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[ 24 October 2003: Message edited by: paxamillion ]