Battle for the minds

Conflict requires more than military

09/30/2001

The world community is hard at work — increasing and sharing intelligence on potential terrorist attacks, providing for better civil alerts and defense, identifying and moving to prosecute terrorists and seize their organizations' funds. In short, foiling terrorists and potentially striking back at states that harbor them. All that is necessary, but it's certainly not sufficient. Stopping the plans of radical Islamic terrorists in the short term won't stop their terrorism in the long term as their schools, their culture and their global perceptions breed terrorist attempts.

To win the war on terrorism, a major battle must be won — call it a battle for the minds.

America and the international community must address the motives and goals of these terrorists in order to contain terrorism. This will be difficult because these terrorists don't want simple things like self-rule or minority rights. They believe in the inherent evil of Western civilization and want the American presence in Muslim states eliminated, and they want Western society — typified by America and deemed licentious — destroyed.

An effective anti-terrorism effort must address these perceptions and the conditions that lead to them. It's not just perceived evil American hegemony that's at issue — it is regional poverty and disorder.

In Afghanistan, chaos and want and a dire lack of alternatives caused the real-life version of Lord of the Flies to develop there, with the Taliban perversion of Islam flourishing and terrorist training camps like Osama bin Laden's being embraced.

Improving underlying conditions in an area, reconstructing a society, reduces the attractiveness of fanatical groups and their nefarious ways. This is as true in Afghanistan and Pakistan as it is in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Today, however, America must worry about the evil deeds of these terrorists because Americans are their primary targets.

Americans will continue to be targeted. And no matter how strong this nation makes itself, some weakness no doubt will exist. To win the war against Muslim terrorism, radicals' capability to exploit those weaknesses cannot just be mitigated. America also must work to defuse the conditions and perceptions that serve to motivate the attacks. Although Americans, so blustering and insensitive at times, may not be able to win the hearts of foreign citizens and budding terrorists, America and the West must attempt to sway some minds. It's the only hope for achieving long-term peace.

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