Monday, July 11, 2005
SUPERIOR STRATEGIES INVITED
“Cretan Chris” Sheil dropped by recently to raise the intellectual tone and offer a non-war solution to global terrorism:
A superior strategy may have been to maximise international co-operation in police action to bring the terrorists to book, combined with programs (particularly education programs) that may have the potential to isolate the criminals in their communities ... The role of poverty is complex, and, as I say, it seems to me that the main task is to assist with education programs. I also tend to think trade policies may have a role to play, but there is much more to be said on this topic, and I’ve already lent tim’s site a fair degree of intellectual credibility in exchange for his generous publicity. The main point is that the strategy of combining concentrated international police action with programs that aim to isolate terrorists from sympathetic communities strikes me as sound. On the other side, so to speak, one of the big problems with the Iraq approach is that it has basically snared the world’s most powerful military forces - if big trouble breaks out elswhere, I’m told the only option will be the draft.
There’s much wrong with this—how might fundamentalist Islamoids regard Western “education programs”? Talk about your cultural imperialism—but credit to the Cretan for at least offering something other than “Bush wrong! War bad! I build large papier mache puppet head now!” An invitation to other anti-war lefties: post in comments or send via email your own superior strategies for dealing with events post-9/11. Let’s frame it like this:
You are the President of the United States on September 11, 2001. How do you respond to the attacks of that day, and to the wider issues of North Korea, Iran, and Iraq?
Answers received via email will be published straight, without mockery, as will any comments if they’re subsequently included in a post. One condition: please don’t write “Well, what I wouldn’t do is alienate the global community with my oil-hungry cowboy antics! I also wouldn’t read some book to children while we were under attack, or bomb Abu Ghraib with poison Jews! That’s what I wouldn’t do, Mr Smart Man!”
Instead, tell us what you would have done.