TERRERE’S UNIVERSE by MICHAEL ANGEL FOLORUNSO

Author:MICHAEL ANGEL FOLORUNSO [FOLORUNSO, MICHAEL ANGEL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781481781176
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Published: 2013-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

The Terrorism Springs from:

• “Political alienation. Transnational terrorists are recruited from populations with no voice in their own government and see no legitimate way to promote change in their country. Without a stake in the existing order, they are vulnerable to manipulation by those who advocate a perverse political vision based on violence and destruction.

• Grievances that can be blamed on others. The failures the terrorists feel and see are blamed both on others and on perceived injustices from the recent or sometimes distant past. The terrorists’ rhetoric keeps wounds associated with this past fresh and raw, a potent motivation for revenge and terror.

Defeating terrorism in the long run requires that each of those factors be addressed. Effective democracy provides a counter to each, diminishing the underlying conditions terrorists seek to exploit.

• In place of festering grievances, democracy offers the rule of law, the peaceful resolution of disputes and the habits of advancing interests through compromise.

• In place of culture of conspiracy and misinformation, democracy offers freedom of speech, independent media, and the market place of ideas, which can expose and discredit falsehoods, prejudices and dishonest propaganda.

• In place of an ideology that justifies murder, democracy offers a respect for human dignity that abhors the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians.

Democracy is the antithesis of terrorist tyranny, which is why the terrorists denounce it and are willing to kill the innocent to stop it. Democracy is based on empowerment, while the terrorists’ ideology is based on enslavement. Democracies expand the freedom of their citizens, while the terrorists seek to impose a single set of narrow beliefs. Democracy sees individuals as equal in worth and dignity, having an inherent potential to create, govern themselves and exercise basic freedoms of speech and conscience. The terrorists see individuals as objects to be exploited and then to be ruled and oppressed.

Democracies are not immune to terrorism. In some democracies, some ethnic or religious groups are unable or unwilling to grasp the benefits of freedom otherwise available in the society. Such groups can evidence the same alienation and despair that the transnational terrorists exploit in undemocratic States. This counts for the emergence in democratic societies of home grown terrorists—even among second—and third—generation citizens. Even in these cases, the long-term solution remains deepening the reach of democracy so that all citizens enjoy its benefits. We will continue to guard against the emergence of home grown terrorists within our own homeland as well.

The strategy to counter the lies behind the terrorists’ ideology and deny them future recruits must empower the very people the terrorists most want to exploit: the faithful followers of Islam.

The Short Term: Four priorities of action. The advance of freedom, opportunity and human dignity through democracy is the long-term solution to the transnational terror movement of today. To create the space and time for this long-term solution to take root, we are operating along four priorities of action in the short term.

Prevent Attacks by terrorist networks. A government has no higher obligation than to protect the lives and livelihoods of its citizens.

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