How to Be Tough on Terrorism

[Doug Millison]

How to Be Tough on Terrorism
Robert B. Reich, The American Prospect
October 29, 2001

The righteousness of our cause shouldn't prevent us from asking why so many
people around the world who aren't terrorists hate America and from seeking
ways to reduce their hatred. Recognizing America's past failing in this
regard isn't justifying terrorism. Finding means of ameliorating the hatred
isn't appeasing terrorists. Rather, it's looking at terrorism's larger
context -- the soil in which it has taken root -- and examining our role in
helping to create those conditions or allowing them to endure. [...] Both
sides are wrong: the left for suggesting that this history should make us
any less determined to fight Islamic extremism and the right for assuming
that this record has no bearing on why much of the third world is hostile
toward us. Of course, we must proceed against terrorists with full force.
Yet it's also important to understand that our checkered history has shaped
the understandings of many poor nations whose cooperation we need in order
for that force to be effective and many of the world's poor who are both
attracted to radical fundamentalism and repelled by American bullying.

... continues at http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11813