Wheaton Wire

Issue date: 4/30/08 Section: Commentary

Media Credit: Heather Langley ’10

The debacle in Iraq has distracted the United States from the critical and pressing debate over how to address the real threat posed by Islamic terrorism.

The United States must formulate a comprehensive effort that addresses this real threat by targeting the underlying structural inducements of terrorism. This effort, called "Liberalization Strategy," seeks to proliferate liberal economic and political structures across the cultural Middle East.

To be successful, this strategy must transcend the militaristic symbols and terms presented by the Bush Administration. What we need is a crusade in effort, not in military tactics.

The United States must adopt a proactive,
evolving, and comprehensive strategy to liberalize the Middle East's economic and political structures. This plan must address the dual inducements of terrorism: a deficit of dignity and a disequilibrium of prosperity.

This dual inducement has created a scenario wherein the poor are driven to violence because of deficiencies in economic-political structures, and the well-off are driven to violence because of the humiliation of the Middle East's lagging behind the globe's First World.

Skeptics will note that terrorists purport to be motivated by religious fanaticism. I believe such ostensible motives are convenient justifications. Terrorists shroud themselves in the vocabulary of superstructural motives (i.e., religion). This rhetoric forms a smokescreen and obscures the fires which are decidedly structural in nature and from which terrorism actually originates.

Liberalization Strategy must be implemented using an array of resources. The United States cannot outsource the task of structural liberalization. While indigenous peoples must play a critical and ultimately decisive role in implementing the structural liberalization, their efforts are not enough.

As long as those in power in the Middle East benefit from the status quo and utilize authoritarian tactics, there will be a need for the United States and other established democracies to play an active role in the area. America cannot be the world's policemen, but it can be the democratic world's midwife.

In some scenarios, military force will be necessary. There are no scenarios, however, in which it will be sufficient. The Bush Administration has failed to understand that military force, when used, is merely the enabling mechanism, not the piece de resistance, of Liberalization Strategy.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools