I think the real enemy is ignorance, and also perhaps war.
A positively inspiring article on/of education, and peace: Louise Richardson:
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Us and them
By Jennie Erdal
Published: March 7 2009 02:00 | Last updated: March 7 2009 02:00
~snip~
Everywhere Richardson went, people seemed to be asking the same question: which single book should we read to get a handle on terrorism? There wasn't one. And so Richardson wrote What Terrorists Want - a freethinking examination, informed by three decades of research, of this complex subject. It was her counterblast - if it's possible to have a peaceful, measured counterblast - to what she calls America's "absolutely catastrophic" response to September 11. Her book became that rare thing in academic publishing - a bestseller with no trade-off between accessibility and scholarly rigour.
Which is not to say it was uncontentious. Richardson holds that, despite the dreadfulness of their deeds, most terrorists are neither "crazy" nor even "amoral". On the contrary, most terrorists see themselves as altruistic and noble - Davids against Goliaths - and their objectives are rationally calculated. "Terrorism is a tactic," Richardson says, "and terror is an emotion. It makes no sense to declare war on either." While arguing that terrorism cannot be defeated, Richardson believes passionately that it can be contained. The first step is to understand its appeal to those who practise it, and on the basis of this understanding to devise effective counter-terrorist policies.
Some critics, however, took the view that to try to understand terrorism is to sympathise with it. "I reject that utterly," she says. "I reject equally the notion that all terrorists are evil monsters or psychopaths." Her voice is distinctive - lilting Irish cadences overlaid by what phonologists call the broad Bostonian A.
Richardson's book was in part addressed to those policymakers who believed that the September 11 attack was a security breach to be solved by means of superior force, moral posturing and tough-guy sloganeering - "simplistic formulas of good and evil", she writes. She advocates a more modulated approach, drawing on the counter-terrorism experience of other countries, such as Britain dealing with the IRA, or India responding to Sikh terrorism in Punjab. Instead, what happened was what she describes now as "American exceptionalism run amok" - the refusal to derive any lessons from the experience of any other country. It became a simple case of deploying the military and "beating the bad guys".
While acknowledging the pressure on governments to react forcibly and speedily in the wake of an attack, she believes that to be effective, the response should be as nuanced as the problem. This would include understanding, instead of simply demonising, the enemy, isolating terrorists from what she calls their "enabling communities" and above all living by our principles - "no more Abu Ghraibs", as she puts it now. Her book draws on powerful historical examples of principled American behaviour, notably George Washington's instructions to the officer in charge of the 221 British soldiers taken prisoner at Princeton: "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren."
~snip~
The way for an individual to acquire a lasting legacy is not to "speculate in derivatives" but to invest in libraries, laboratories and scholarships.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d96d0978-0ab6-11de-95ed-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
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