It won't be easy. It truly feels -- pardon this cultural reference -- like a genie you can't stuff back in the bottle. You can't hunt it down because no country is its home; its home is despair, delusion and faith in values such as cosmic war and an afterlife. You can't "make them pay"; they're already dead. You can't threaten their families and communities; that's what started the cycle. But if you can't destroy it, you can try to defuse it.

By that, I mean deprive it of the soil it lives in. Take a precursor: Japan's kamikaze pilots during the Second World War. They were dependent on the emperor's blessing, their nation's applause, its mythology etc. Remove that and it would have been hard to find candidates. Today's soil is the despair and sense of injustice in places such as the Mideast. Communities have been created that laud these gestures, as one sees at Palestinian funerals. "Terrorism experts say the approval of the community is an important reason why terrorists do what they do," wrote Marcus Gee. You defuse this by eliminating the worst cases of wretchedness that sustain it. An obvious example, since Palestine has been a tinderbox of religious terror, and the Israeli occupation has been the tinderbox of the tinderbox, would be to end the occupation and hand those lands back to Palestinians. It would be hard, because of the settlers, but it would eliminate the tinderbox. A similar case would involve ending sanctions against Iraq that have led, the UN says, to the death of a million children.

The fanatics themselves wouldn't vanish. And fanaticism itself may be a human perennial. But there would be massive relief among huge numbers who yearn mainly to live decent, unharassed lives. The despair, mania and hate that sustain the fanatics would largely be withdrawn.

Would this mean "giving in to terrorism"? No, it would be a strategy to cut off its oxygen. It would also be the right thing to do, but think of that as merely collateral damage.

[read more]

[letter in the Globe and Mail, September 12]
"Ironically, it is the citizens of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, who can best empathize with New Yorkers and other Americans horrified by the terrorist attacks on their city. During the 72 days of terrorist bombing by NATO to force the Yugoslavian to sign the hated Rambouillet accords, an American plane sent a rocket into the top of the tall office building housing the offices of the governing socialist party. Shortly afterward, a second plane sent a rocket into the base of the building, where firefighters and rescue workers were gathered."

both thanks to wood s lot