The Roots of Terrorism: How We Combat Terrorism

In the two blogs previous to this one, I argued that two of the major underlying causes of terrorism are foreign military occupation, and poverty. I went on to illustrate that one connection between how terrorists recruit people and how gangs in the US recruit people is that they prey on the young and unemployed. 

In addition to the parallel of how gangs/drug dealers recruit new members and how terrorists recruit new members, I also believe there is a parallel in how the U.S. government has delt with these two groups of people. 

I give you the man who declared the "War on Drugs"

When drug usage rates were at an all time high in the early seventies, how did the President Nixon decide to decrease them? Well they came up with the creatively titled "War on Drugs". The government has spent over $1 trillion on the "war". Meanwhile, organizations like the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Department of Education Anti-drug Funds, took hits to their funding of over 75% between 1981 and 1984. I believe this led to the 708% increase in incarcarations between when the war started in 1971 and 2008. And what happens to someone once they get out of their “correctional” facility? Well, now they have a jail record so getting any sort of a job is that much tougher. Often, they end up going right back to prison for doing the same crime that got them locked up in the first place. Politicians love to be "tough on crime", but after 40 years of this lock-up first and ask questions later policy not making any significant dent in drug usage rates, well, I think we need to start asking questions. Namely, is this "tough on crime" approach the right one?

And our approach with the war on terror is similar in many ways. As I discussed in the first post of this series, the US has spent over billion of dollars, deployed millions of troops, and killed over 100,000 innocent civilians in the war on terror. But when foreign military occupation leads to terrorism, I can't help but wonder if this is the best way of stopping terrorism.

Clearly, the U.S. government is fond of this highly expensive blunt force approach when dealing with issues such as terrorism and drug rates. Unfortunately, it seems as though this approach hasn't truly "dealt" with these issues at all. After all, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are still at large and drug usage rates continue to increase. Our government needs to radically change the way it deals with both drug-related arrests and terrorism.

As I discussed in my last blog, both of these issues are deeply rooted in poverty. So instead of focusing our efforts on incarcerating and killing people, we should focus on stimulating job growth both at home and abroad. If you provide someone with a purpose in life and a steady income through a job then they wont need to search for these things in a terrorist group or gang. I'm not saying that we shouldn't arrest people for drug dealing or that it isn't at times necessary to fight terrorist groups with violence; Rather, I'm saying that our government should change our policies regarding drug-related arrests (lessening the jail time for possesion of relatively small amounts of drugs would be a start) and alter the way we combat terrorism.

What changes need to be made to the way our government is currently combating terrorism? Well, if our government used less violence and military force, and instead chose to combat poverty and provide foreign aid I think the number of terrorists trying to attack the US would decrease. If we  focused on helping these countries to improve their infrastructure instead of raising a coup or occupuying their soil, then we could improve foreign relations, decrease the number of terrorists being recruited, decrease the number of terrorist attacks or attempted attacks on US citizens and soldiers,  decrease the amount of money we spend on defense, and ultimately save a whole lot of lives on both sides.