The best weapon against terrorism is to eradicate the reasons for it. What are they? Certain organisations are not happy with certain policies and start terrorising when this is the only way they can object. Calling all terrorism evil is completely useless as the terrorists think those taking certain decisions making them carry out acts are the most evil, so dialogue in that tone is impossible. Nobody will give up their positions and we have a closed circuit.
So a government has to think which demands are moral if separated from the acts. Say there is a PLO (Palestine Liberation Army) that demands a free Palestinian state, and only demands this. That demand is moral and must be satisfied no matter how much Jews who live on occupied lands suffer when their houses are eradicated. This brings us to another problem. The lobby of those Jews must be ignored.
So we give in to moral demands although that may mean material loss to our country, but we have some terrorism less.
At the same time, those organisations whose demands are unacceptable have to be battled with swiftness, extreme power, totally. Say we have a Hamas organisation which demands something stupid like death to all Jews. We collect tons of information about this organisation spending billions if necessary, than, in one sweep, we eradicate the organisation totally. This is possible and Stalin destroyed many nationalistic terrorist organisations in this way.
We use immense force and terrorise those carrying out acts (kill everyone in the organisation and send their kids and family to labour camps) and terrorise those who may join their cause - by explaining to people what will happen to them when they join organisations with immoral demands. By giving in to organisations with moral demands we show those same potential terrorists (all, say, Palestinian population) that we are able to separate good demands from bad demands. This will work pre-emptively on those trying to organise groups too, as the payoff may not be so certain any more. If necessary even carry out some purges of your own politicians who stubbornly didn't want to turn in to demands that are moral - say, creation of independant Palestinian state.
So, we got rid of organised terrorism - but that required very centralised decisions on our part. Stalin could do this, can a democracy ever do this? |