Kamala Sarup: Will Good Govt. Minimize Terrorism?

We all know that terrorists are targeting and killing small children, women and civilians. I can't speak for terrorism in Global, but I can see that in Nepal and in South Asian countries. The Russian and Nepali schools are an example. Children die by being "in the way" for the killing of adults by terrorists. From the news, it seems that lots of innocent people are in the way of the combatants or are deliberately targeted by terrorists. These include grown men and women as well as children, if they accompany parents. Like in Iraq or Afghanistan many children were targeted by violence. Like when the Chechens took over a school in Russia and killed many children and adults who happened to be at the school too. Terrorists kill innocent adults. Like, Sunnis kill Shiite adults. Etc. I also see deliberate targeting of children or students in the Middle East and elsewhere.

In the U.S., the policy seems to be to protect the most vulnerable public places, and these are gov't buildings, utilities, schools, etc. I don't see any concentration of protection for U.S. children. With regard to them, American also need more protection against U.S. pedophiles and U.S. crazy gunmen and gun children.

Since human behavior is a combination of genes and environment ("nature and nurture"), your proposed solutions might help the environmentally induced aggression, but not our genetically induced aggression. Therefore, aggression will always be with us, not matter what environment is established. However, considering the latter as a way to at least reduce aggression somewhat, consider that asocial behavior of all kinds is a consequence of the combination ignorance, aggression, and greed, formal education partially helps employment partially helps good parenting helps but nobody pays any attention to that source of our problems, so what you propose are only partial solutions. As for "good government", that would help all three problems indirectly by promoting employment, education, parenting, etc., but that concept must be translated into specific programs to be meaningful.

Good government requires cooperation among the government representatives of the people to get things accomplished that are useful to the people rather than the representatives themselves. When representatives are immobile because they cannot agree on courses of action to help each others constituents and/or they are selfish and care more about their individual wealth rather than the wealth of the people in general, then the people will continue to be poor and may domestic terrorists.

Terrorism as "the murder of innocents", i.e., non-military, non-police, and non-politicians. Army is used by the government to protect the general population from foreign and domestic aggressors.

Armies and police can defend the country against terrorists, but are ineffective against isolated terrorist attacks. Outside the country, an army can assist to defeat terrorism, but cannot accomplish that alone because terrorists are not found in armies. Only way to defeat terrorism is to assist police and intelligence to find terrorists and bring them to justice. However, it will take a long time because wealthy terrorists sustain with money and arms, which are difficult to stop.

Terrorists can survive longer if they become immune within a country. That is why it is important to bring them to justice from their havens. The deaths and the property losses after terrorists attack cannot be restored completely no matter how much money other countries send.

We certainly can defeat terrorism if we spend lots more time, money and create awareness to do so over a long period of time. Whether or not we will be willing to make these sacrifices to achieve these objectives is indeterminable at this time.

On the other side we also have to remember successful Nepal also is at war, and many soldiers, police and unarmed civilians have been killed in Nepal. We must show our respect and pay tribute to all those killed in this war. However, we also know the Maoists must disarm themselves and come for peace negotiations. The US State Department recently released their 2005 list of terrorist groups. Maoists group and Janamorcha are included. It is true, communists/Maoists in some other countries still practice terrorism, e.g., Peru and Columbia.

The Communist groups in the Universities and in the schools during the 7o's tried for a Marxist revolution and failed. By tradition, the power behind any communist revolution was rejected. After that they then tried for black support, but again they were rejected. They then used the Vietnam War and Shining Path, that too disappeared. Lacking support, the movement apparently faded away. So Maoists must come for peace negotiations.

(Kamala Sarup is editor of http://peacejournalism.com/ )

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