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Dubya
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Lebell, how would you define "Screw 'em"? Kneejerk doesn't come to mind? 
Follows is an excerpt from an article entitled " Fighting Effective War Against Terrorism":
Quote:
Underlying Motivations
The underlying situation that motivated al Qaeda leaders, as indicated in their own statements -- and that presumably formed part of the motivation of their followers -- has several components:
1. Very strong cultural influence of Islam throughout the Muslim world. Religion permeates daily life much more - you have to go back to the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries in Europe to have a comparable situation in the development of Christianity.
2. Islam is a religion in which the individual seeks salvation and death in battle assures salvation. There is a widespread tradition that recognizes and awards high prestige to martyrdom action in hopeless situations and honors the parents and relatives of martyrs. This is in spite of very direct condemnation of suicide by Mohammed himself.
3. Resentment against ineffective, often corrupt, predominantly secular governments that pay lip service to the tenets of Islam, but are reluctant to put them into practice and often suppress fundamentalists by force.
4. Sagging economies, very high unemployment, poor education, very high birthrate, low technological and scientific achievement.
5. Resentment against the U.S. and other Western countries for arrogance, secular materialism, history of colonial domination, political manipulation and interference in support of corrupt governments, in short, for succeeding while Islamic governments fail.
6. Resentment against the U.S. for its highly visible support of many of the Arab governments and especially for U.S. support of Israel, and against Israel itself for being a mini-USA and repeatedly defeating Arab armies while prospering.
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Here are some well thought out proposals on making sure 9/11 doesn't happen again:
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I believe an attack of the magnitude of September 11 is unlikely to be repeated. The U.S. military retaliation in Afghanistan, the dispersal of Taliban and al Qaeda personnel, the loss of the protected al Qaeda base there (al Zawahiri says that a protected base is absolutely essential for al Qaeda operations) and the mobilization of anti-terrorist measures throughout the world are a deterrent to future al Qaeda-type terrorism.
However, cruise missiles and B52's won't stop the process of recruitment of potential martyrs. Economic development, although necessary, is too slow in its effects to stop it. The al Qaeda belief system is in fact an ideology, an amalgam of propositions taken on faith with concrete political goals. This ideology has to be attacked directly and discredited.
That is the aim of the measures we propose, which have also been adopted by the international steering committee for the Global Action to Prevent War project meeting in Berlin last week.
We propose putting al Qaeda personnel - perhaps some of the ones the U.S. is holding now in Guantanamo Bay or Afghanistan if we can't get bin Laden or Zawahiri - on public international trial. We believe they will condemn themselves out of their own mouths as fanatical extremists, as did the Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg trials.
We propose support for efforts to develop an Islamic indictment of al Qaeda actions - mainstream Islam prohibits both attacks on civilians and suicide.
Above all, we propose modern secular education. The tenets of radical Islam cannot stand up to modern secular education, especially history.
It is true that bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the September 11 participants, were well educated in technical and scientific subjects.
This is also true of other leaders of radical Islam. It is as though their technical knowledge helps them appreciate how far down the Arab states have sunk. These men are the middle-class intellectuals who have spearheaded every modern revolution: French, American, Russian, Turkish, Chinese.
But we believe that most potential bin Laden followers and recruits who have received modern secular education will find it hard to accept that the problems of the Arab countries can be resolved by return to seventh century Islam.
A solid background of modern secular education, including modern science and history, including an explanation of the material rise of Europe in the industrial revolution, will eliminate most although not all potential recruits for "martyrdom operations." Moreover, this education will be a steady source of pressure for democratization of Arab societies.
This is why the main action proposal both of the UN Association and the Global Action to Prevent War project, is to establish a well-financed UN Education Foundation for Arabic-language, modern, non-religious education at primary, secondary and university levels for both sexes offered to Mideastern countries and to Pakistan (in Urdu), free of cost. The UN Education Foundation, of which at least half the employees would be Arab educators, would develop curriculum, recruit teaching staff, and establish actual schools.
Clearly, this project could take a long time to implement fully. But it could be started immediately, and is a project which can be wholeheartedly supported by the UN, member governments, NGOs and by individuals throughout the world who want to take practical action to prevent the continuation of al Qaeda terrorism.
In the early 1960's, when I was working in the State Department's Office of Soviet Affairs, we developed what we called a policy of engagement, designed to increase Western contacts with leadership groups in the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. The objective was to blunt the ideological commitment of these leaders by confronting them with a maximum amount of disconfirming information, information that clashed with their beliefs. Our reasoning was that if we could affect the views of the communist elite, a few "true believers" would still exist, but their number would fall below the minimum number needed to sustain the system.
The objective with al Qaeda should be to create so many doubters that radical Islamism ceases to be an important force. If this can be achieved in cooperation with Arab governments, then we will have succeeded in draining the swamp of radical Islamic terrorism and will have unleashed many constructive forces.
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I bolded what I especially wanted to highlight for you all.
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"In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. It's - and it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work. We're making progress. It is hard work."
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