Roots of Terrorism

[berdan]

Good Evening folks.

My name is Alex. I am a college student and a National Guard soldier. I was directed to post at this site by another member for information on a specific topic I was assigned for a class.

I am posting a question I was assigned in order to get the views and knowledge of proffessionals who have learned by experience.


Political Science Y380- Topic Terrorism

Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis-IUPUI

Terrorism 2004
Paper Assignment #1
Due 12FEB2004

"The search for Roots" (this is the exact question I was assigned)
"After September 11, the news media were filled with articles about the "root causes" of the terrorist attacks. Select two possible "root causes" of the terrorist attacks of 9-11. (These need not be factors that you believe caused the attacks.) How do these "toot causes" influence what ought to be the response to terrorism? How plausible do you think these factors are as "root causes"? Why do you think we seek "root causes" of terrorism?

"This paper should be 5-7 pages. It is not an exhaustive research paper: but you should cite textual evidence for your claims. Provide concrete examples, for instance, of people who claim that "x is a root cause of terrorism."


I wish to include the views of those of you who answer this question in my paper. I will follow all opsec rules and any guidlines you impose. I will NOT list where/who/how I got this information. My intentions toward this assignment and this post are honorable and by no means liberal in any sense. I will uphold the strictest form of proffessionalism in my preparation for this paper. I am truly interested in what your views are toward this subject.

Respectfully

berdan

[NousDefionsDoc]

I would have think one of the root causes is the politico-religous indoctrine given in the madrasas for years.

Another I think is the hjatred for continuing US support of Israel.

UBL's stated cause in US presence in the Muslim Holy Land.

[NousDefionsDoc]

As far as influence, I think that if you understand the real root causes, they should be the drivers for determining the response. problem is, we rarely get to root causes that don't influence our own elections.

[NousDefionsDoc]

2. In general, do you think that the September 11 attacks were primarily the result of ... ?
Canada
A reaction against Western domination and values - 28
The conflict in the Middle East - 25
The result of U.S. foreign policy in the Arab world - 23
Unprovoked actions taken by fanatics - 15
All of the above - 3
Other - 1
None of the above - 1
No reason/nothing *
DK/NA - 5

This is further reflected on the basis of language as French-speakers are more inclined to attribute the events to U.S. foreign policy than their English-speaking counterparts who see the
reaction to Western domination and values as the main reason (though in neither do these explanations represent a majority view).

http://www.acs-aec.ca/Polls/Poll12.pdf

[NousDefionsDoc]

http://www.irri-kiib.be/speechnotes/...roCoolsaet.pdf

Another viewpoint

[NousDefionsDoc]

http://www.globalpolicy.org/wtc/terr...2/0924asem.htm

http://www.dailygusto.com/news/septe...ot-092303.html

http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorbkgd/rootcauses.html

[Roguish Lawyer]

Do you have Erickson, Clark or Wallihan?

[berdan]

J. Clark

[Roguish Lawyer]

John Clark
Adjunct Professor

John Clark is Senior Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a think tank headquartered in Indianapolis. He is the Director of the Institute's Center for Central European and Eurasian Studies. Among the books he has written or edited are:

The Moral Collapse of Communism: Poland as a Cautionary Tale (with Aaron Wildavsky, 1990), one of the first analyses of the death of communism in the Soviet Bloc.

The Development of the Private Sector in the Baltic Countries (1993), a study commissioned by the US Agency for International Development examining the difficulties of economic transition in Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.

Environmental Protection in Transition (1998), a collection of essays by several Polish and American legal scholars, economists, and environmentalists.

Re-Working Welfare: The Transformation of Social Policy in Wisconsin (2000), a critical assessment of the implementation and outcomes of Wisconsin's pathbreaking welfare reform.

While at Hudson, Dr. Clark has written papers and articles on topics ranging from organized crime in the former USSR to Northeast Asian international security, from Polish political economy to the decay of civic engagement in the United States, from the roots of the crisis in Kosovo to the future of the welfare state in Europe. He is currently writing "The Disintegration of Eurasia?" a study of the impact on US foreign policy of future ethnic and social conflicts in Russia, China, Indonesia, and India

In addition to teaching Russian and Chinese politics at IUPUI, Dr. Clark is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Butler University, where he teaches courses on political philosophy, European politics, and Asian politics.

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuse...TOKEN=33747456

Doubts and Opportunities


Fall 2002 Issue




by John Clark

ecollections and commemorations of September 11 often emphasize Americans’ claustrophobic sense of vulnerability: the world must be much smaller than we recently imagined, when the World Trade Center can be laid low by disorder in Afghanistan and discontents in Saudi Arabia. In the weeks following September 11, Americans’ feelings of helplessness only increased. The anthrax mailings—the still unidentified perpetrator(s) could easily have killed a hundred times more people than the five unfortunates who died—revealed that regardless of whether one works in a skyscraper or the Pentagon, everyone is at risk of a terrorist attack.

Even the reassuring initial outpouring of sympathy from around the world was replaced by televised images of flag-burning, anti-American demonstrations in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In this disturbingly small world, no one seems to like us very much, and those who don’t like us can inflict enormous amounts of damage without warning.

Less discussed, however, has been a dizzying expansion of opportunities for America to change this world. Pre-September 11 discussions of the dangers facing America seem naïve and innocent today. Likewise, foreign policy debates before October 7, when the surprisingly easy military campaign in Afghanistan was launched, now seem to have been hampered by a seriously constricted vision. In Afghanistan, the United States demonstrated much more than the fact that its military is greater than all other armies in the world combined:




Before the American bombing began, more than three-and-a-half million Afghans lived in wretched refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan (the Taliban emerged from these camps); today, more than two million of these refugees have returned to their homes, and almost all should be able to return by the end of 2003.


Even the four thousand Afghan civilians who were killed in the past year should be viewed in context. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough: Afghan civilian deaths are a tragedy. Those people did nothing to deserve their fate, and they should not have died. But it is a fact that during the prior twenty-two years of Afghan civil war, on average more than fifty thousand civilians died every year. So long as the United States and the web of international organizations that now, with the defeat of the Taliban, are able to work in Afghanistan remain engaged in relief and reconstruction, the number of civilian casualties should dwindle to almost zero.
A year ago, who would have expected an American president to promise, as President Bush did in his commencement address at Virginia Military Institute, to keep American troops in Afghanistan until minefields are cleared, roads are rebuilt, medical care is available, and the Afghan economy can feed its people without growing opium poppies? A year ago, who would have expected this same president to have committed the nation to securing around the world what he calls “the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity . . . the rule of law; limits on the power of the state; respect for women; private property; free speech; equal justice; and religious tolerance”? Societies and cultures now are viewed as plastic and pliable, able to be molded according to our “nonnegotiable demands.”

In the 1990s, many analysts doubted that American military action could bring order—to say nothing of real democracy—to places like Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Today many of those skeptics are in the White House arguing that an American invasion of Iraq will not only topple Saddam Hussein and bring democracy to Baghdad, but also create pressures on our friends (Saudi Arabia and Egypt) and foes (Iran and Syria) to embrace democracy themselves. Presidential advisers argue about how to redraw international borders and what sorts of political institutions to establish in countries without any recent history of liberal democracy. Witnessing such a dramatic shift in policy perspectives is dizzying indeed, especially in an avowedly conservative administration.

In spite of our power, we Americans are still far from perfect in our understanding of this complex world. Perhaps we social scientists and policy analysts are to blame for this. A decade after the wave of democratization in Latin America, Africa, and the formerly communist countries, we still are not quite sure what ingredients go into a successful transition. We still are not certain whether particular actions will exacerbate or defuse Islamic extremism. At this time of previously unimagined opportunities, of boundless confidence in America’s power, and of the persistence of very real threats, the United States is engaged in an overdue process of rethinking its assumptions about what it can hope to achieve in the international arena. The world may not have changed on September 11, but it certainly changed on October 7.



John Clark is the director of the Center for Central European and Eurasian Studies for Hudson Institute.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Right - a lib.

[berdan]

I like the class and the Professor makes it even more interesting. He knows what he teaches.

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuse...details&id=987

September 21, 2001

Rethinking a Too-Narrow Foreign Policy

by John Clark

During its first 233 days, the Bush Administration seemed to abdicate America’s role as global leader for rea-sons that were hardly noble or serious. It now has a rare opportunity to recreate its bobbled foreign policy.

Republicans spent much of the 1990s criticizing the Clinton Administration for overextending America’s mili-tary forces around the world. Vital American interests were being neglected, it was said, as US troops were sent to keep peace in the Balkans or to create order in the chaos of Haiti.

During its first months in office, the Bush Administration seemed eager to “go it alone.” Its number one prior-ity was to erect a National Missile Defense that would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, for three decades the foundation for nuclear arms control. Our allies in Europe and Asia that while protecting America, missile defense would diminish the security of the world as a whole. Rivals such as China and Russia con-demned the plan as proof that an arrogant America would do anything to cement its military dominance as the sole superpower.

More troubling than its concern only with America’s national interests at the expense of those of our allies or of the planet was the Bush Administration’s apparent willingness to allow special interests in the US to dictate its foreign policy. It scuttled seven years of negotiations to establish enforcement measures to the 1972 Bio-logical Weapons Convention, abandoning efforts to add teeth because they “would put national security and confidential business information at risk.” In other words, critics said, the Administration sacrificed the pre-vention of germ warfare and bio-terrorism to protect the patents and profits of American biotechnology corporations.

In July, the Bush Administration watered down proposals to limit illegal international trafficking in light weapons by threatening to withdraw from the United Nations Conference on Small Arms. The reason: it might interfere with Americans’ Second Amendment rights to bear arms. Rather than address a problem that contrib-utes to a thousand deaths per day around the world, claimed critics, the Administration chose to placate the National Rifle Association.

Everything changed last Tuesday. The Administration’s immediate response was to assemble a broad anti-terrorism coalition whose purpose would go beyond apprehending those responsible for the attacks in New York and Washington. The US-led effort would uproot other terrorist organizations across the globe and pun-ish the countries that harbor and promote terrorism.

The Bush Administration thus accepts an immense responsibility that will force it to rethink and reverse its previous approaches to foreign policy. It will have to heed the demands and fears of its coalition partners. This requires wisdom and caution since many of our bedfellows define “terrorism” differently than we do. We should not refrain from criticizing the Russians’ brutal abuse of Chechnya, even though these inhumane poli-cies are in the name of combating terrorism.

America’s anti-terrorism policy must be based on more than vengeance, more than protecting ourselves from future attacks. Some of the potential partners in the Muslim world risk terrorist attacks and insurrection by extremists at home if they join our coalition. Every country in Europe, in fact, possesses large Muslim minori-ties. But Muslims will not be the only ones to protest if it appears that innocent civilians are being killed only for revenge or, worse, to preserve the Bush Administration’s political credibility.

We may bomb Iraq and Afghanistan, we may capture Osama bin Laden or topple Saddam Hussein or “take out the Taliban.” If at that point America declares victory and walks away, we will leave behind a wasteland of chaos and anarchy that will breed even more terrorism and instability in the future. If we are serious about leading, we commit ourselves to much more difficult peacekeeping and state building than anything in Bosnia or Kosovo.

If they feel they are contributing to a safer world for all, our allies and coalition partners could be willing to sacrifice much. But if we seem to care only about our own narrow national interests, who will support us after the next terrible attack? And if we seem only to seek revenge, another more terrible attack is certain.

A chance for a truly fresh start is a rare and precious thing in foreign policy. Let’s not bungle it, because we won’t get another.

John Clark is the director of the Center for Central European and Eurasian Studies for Hudson Institute.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Cool name though. When you give him your paper, tell him you do it "Without Remorse". LOL

[Roguish Lawyer]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Cool name though. When you give him your paper, tell him you do it "Without Remorse". LOL

LOL, I was thinking the same thing.