Terrorism is a tool and a verb. It is not something that is a tangible entity and so therefore one cannot wage a conventional war against it. By doing so it enables the people in power to fight a war for whatever reason they choose to with the outward appearance of moral justification to the general population. This is so because of the harsh connotations associated with terrorism and the fear it invokes in people. By playing off of people’s fears it is letting terrorists win and by fighting a conventional war it makes the conditions that produce terror in the first place more prevalent. This is a vicious cycle and it must be broke somehow.

The fact is if a group of people wants to kill others they can. A rogue act by an individual or a few people against others cannot be stopped. Think about it: if you wanted to perform an act of violence on your fellow man couldn’t you do it if you really wanted too? The only way you could stop events like this would be to live under a totalitarian rule where the very rights you hold to be self evident are put on the back burner for security. Even then you would still have the occasional wing-nut or two slip through the cracks of the system. The way you fight terrorism is by making the underlying motivations for it to become null and void. You do this through the principles of what made this country great to begin with, egalitarian compromise and open debate. This is the complete anti-thesis of how this “War on Terror” is being fought and it almost seems intentionally so.

Terrorist do not fight because they hate our freedom or for any other jingoistic factor. The reason why they attack us or other groups of people is because they have a political agenda whose needs are not being met. People are inherently good, including terrorists, and will not fight unless they have a legitimate reason to do so. Usually when a group resorts to violence it is because one or more of their basic human rights are being violated. This is universally true in almost all instances of terror and all one has to do to understand this is to try to be objective and put themselves in the other person’s shoes and ask themselves what they would do if they were in that situation. I dare any person to try to empathize with the average Palestinian and ask themselves if they would not do the same if they were dealt the same cards in life. All but the most Ghandi or Christ-types would. I am sorry Israel. I love you but I must ask these tough questions as your very survival as a nation depends on it and if your current methods for fighting terror do not stop your nation in its present form will not exist in the not too distant future. This is simply the objective truth and I do not want to see this happen. You can call me an anti-Semite all you want but with my particular bloodline I know this argument will not work as a house divided against itself will not stand.

I do not ask these difficult questions with a motivation to try to justify terror. I am not. I only ask these questions to try to get people to understand the root causalities of terror with an effort to try to rid the world of them. People will not fight if they have decent paying jobs and are not poor. People will not fight if they have food in their stomachs. People will not fight if they have an opportunity for social advancement. People will not fight if they have an education. People will not fight if they have a decent environment to raise a family. People will not fight if they have endless supplies of free electrical energy to power their industries. People will not fight if their land is not forcefully taken from them. And people will not fight if their land is not under constant occupation.

So by making these conditions manifest in the world is the real way you fight terror. By doing what we are doing in this country will only make these conditions worse and it will only increase terror for years to come. We are losing this war because we are going about fighting it in the wrong way and we are less safe three years after 9-11 for doing it. What kind of a world will our children have if the people in power have their way by waging a hundred year war on terror? Will it be a world worth living in?

With the world increasing technologically everyday the proliferation of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” cannot be stopped without the most Draconian measures. Again this is just reality speaking. A Weapon of Mass Destruction as it is currently defined by the present administration is something that falls under the most broad of definitions. If calling something like Mustard Gas a Weapon of Mass Destruction is really a legitimate action then about 80 million people in this country alone are in possession of enough substance to wipe out the population of America four times over. The two chemical ingredients of Mustard Gas are common household cleaning agents that most households have possession of at any given time. Are we to invade the households of America in the name of the fight against terror? If so I would like to make the recommendation following the author Michelle Malkin that we immediately establish interment camps for all housewives over the age of thirty who are in possession of such chemicals and hold them indefinitely without trial until we can determine for sure that they don’t have any terror links. This is after all the only true way to try to make the world safe by eliminating “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

Besides these obvious contradictions with the broad definition of WMDs there are also legitimate weapons that would fall under a more rational definition, but these to cannot really be stopped unless the human rights are squashed on a global level. The information on exotic WMDs of all types are all over the place and the variations on a theme are limited to only one’s imagination. Any half decent science hack can figure it out and they eventually will. This is again just reality speaking and this is what is starting to be seen in Israel with the Qusaam rockets and this general trend will escalate in years to come. Pretty soon within the next thirty years just about any country with a lab of a few hundred thousand dollars will have a real WMD in some form or another. The only way to stop this would be to take away essential liberties to the point that the world would literally be divided into a two tiered social structure and this still would not stop it completely. The age old Marxist have vs. have-not dichotomy would then be taken to the level of a global police state. This of course is an extreme picture but yet if you take the logical premises of the current administration’s policies at face value this is the only end result that can happen if you want to try to fight terror in the manner they are doing it. So what is the end game and where are we going with all of this? Is this current foreign policy one of vision as it is being marketed or is it one of temporary consolidation of world resource power? To answer this question I would ask the reader to take the position of a Haliburton or Carlyle Group executive.

In summary the way that we are fighting terrorism is wrong. It is in fact making the world a less safe place to live in. The only way to stop terrorism and the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction by a conventional war would be to take away the human rights that we Americans hold dear to the point that it would be a complete contradiction to the very principles this country was founded on. The real way you fight terror is to cure the underlining causes by wiping out poverty and hunger. A global redistribution of wealth is called for and it is the only way this world will last and get past the dark age that it has currently found itself in. What is really needed is a new global economy that is based on renewable infinite sources of energy and contrary to what is presented to the average person there are such solutions to that problem. It is getting these technologies to the common man that is what we must strive for to defeat terror i
n all its forms and bring this world closer to the place God intended.

Sincerely, Joseph J. Hrevnack