In light of the five year anniversary for the United States-led invasion of Iraq, how do we deal with terrorism? The foreign policy agendas posed by Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and Barack Obama all appear to have the same message: violence will always beget violence.

In terms of terrorism, if the United States goes out, messes with the rest of the world and treats people like crap, those people are in turn going to start to hate you; it’s a basic human reaction to extreme situations.

How many governments have been overthrown by the United States, often leaving citizens stuck with vicious dictatorships that have tortured and killed them? What are they going to think about us? Certainly not, “Oh, thanks for everything … we love you guys!”

Citizens of other countries might respect the fact that the United States has an advanced economy and a lot more economic opportunities than their own countries – they may even immigrate here – but as Paul has pointed out in the past – they don’t attack us because we’re more advanced than them.

This is a natural progression of attitudes: there is going to be a certain amount of hatred built up during a time of oppression.

Specifically, think about what we’ve been doing since September 11. First, the United States goes into Afghanistan. They overthrow the government and in the process bomb the smithereens out of the country and kill a lot of people. Do you think the people affected by American bombs or the anti-personnel weapons that get dropped – designed to send out these metal pieces in all directions and basically kill and torture people – are going to have warm feelings about the United States? Do you think those people are going to be pro-American?

Then the United States goes into Iraq, overthrows the government and gets stuck in a drawn-out struggle for control, which didn’t exactly endear us to many of the people in the Middle East. The US government chose to support Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without any regard whatsoever for the Palestinians, instead of taking a balanced approach, another action making us unpopular in the Middle East, particularly among Palestinians.

No one engages in terrorist activities because they were born with it or had a sect that they were in; they do it because they get so angry about what’s happened that they’re willing to die for a cause. The United States is producing opponents who are willing to die for a cause, and that cause is largely to fight back against us, their oppressors.

The biggest problem with the fight against terrorism is that we’re continuing to produce conditions that produce more terrorists. Our policy is fuel to the fire. The war in Iraq is the No. 1 thing that is producing terrorism in the world today. If we would just stop, there would certainly be a positive outcome.

We’re not getting at the root cause of why people are becoming terrorists in the first place. If you want to stop crime, you deal with the roots of crime. If you want to stop terrorism, you deal with the roots of terrorism. You have to get to the bottom of why people do things, and then undercut those reasons so they don’t do it. If you want to reduce the number of immigrants in this country, you get to the root of why people are coming, which are because their conditions are horrible, and you try to deal with that.

Originally published in Northeastern University’s The Huntington News – Thursday, March 26, 2008

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