Putting terrorism in perspective

One overlooked fact with the current threat of international terrorism is the incredible evolution humankind has gone through in the last decades. Little over 60 years ago, Europe was in flames and so was nearly half the world. For decades following the last major war, the world stood on the brink of nuclear armageddon on a daily basis. Today, these ideas have lost so much meaning that the handfew who hold ideological beliefs have to shout or hit to even be heard. The fantastic beliefs of such individuals resonate only to the poor few who have lost hope for themselves or who think they have something to benefit. It was as true with poor russian and chinese peasants and german workers as it is to anyone today living in poverty. There have been plenty of both miserable and exploiters in human history.

Today, there is little immediate threat to fear from any nation and the interdependance of world economics has generated a prosperity that has shown the obvious economic advantages of peace and democracy. There is no current threat capable of sending ICBMs, heavy mechanical forces, fighter jets or highly equiped troops outside of the United States.

Luckily, the shaky remnants of democracy still infused in the American system is many times more likely to improve than even the most moderate of abusive regimes. It remains nonetheless that world justice and democracy is highly unlikely without the G7 becoming truly democratic nations, the United States being the most critically important. If western governments were at least capable of finalizing the last few reforms that will make then achieve a truly democratic form, humankind would be better prepared for its long-term evolution.

It takes a nation to lead a war. Groups can only wage battles and are no match against an organized army. However even the most powerful army in the world is not immuned from political stupidity. There is little to fear from all the most fearsome terrorists combined compared to some of the most unlikely armed forces. Even the small, heavily trained, Canadian forces would have been sufficiant to handle all terrorist groups if they had been handed intelligent political decisions. This strategy only works when actual decision-making drives politics, which is impossible without full accountability for every political decision.

Unilateralism would not work any better against the United States than it does in its favor. That American politicians fail to understand this speaks greatly of their utter incompetence in doing anything remotely related to political decision-making. There is no reason to believe that what is completely impossible in each and every aspect of society, that individiduals can be unaccountable for their decisions without undesirable consequences, could work in politics, where everything is in fact less likely to happen than in any other human affair.

Bin Laden's group is hated throughout the Middle East and the large majority of muslims support democratic reforms. All over human history groups of disaffected egomaniacal males believed they had a divine quest to liberate their fellow. Uses of organized violence against the established order can be counted in the hundreds of thousands, probably even millions. What islamic terrorists do is not unlike what hundreds of thousands of violent groups did in human history.

Islam itself is irrelevant to the question of islamic terrorism. It is merely ideology that, once again, causes great loss and suffering. A crime of passion's motive has no effect on the nature of the crime. A religious motive does not change that fact and is one of many types of such crimes. There have been people ready to die for their beliefs throughout human history and there are still today in every culture. In the middle ages and before, those who acted as the islamic terrorists today became kings and emperors. The seizure of power always begins with a conviction that surpasses the fear of death.

It is far from new in human society to use violence to gain desirable objectives. History only legitimizes winners, regardless of prior motives. It is the way criminals operate and it is the way tyrants operate. There have been millions of the first and thousands of the latter. There have been catholic terrorists, buddhist terrorists, pagan terrorists, protestant terrorists, atheist terrorists just as there were smart and dumb terrorists who acted for numerous reasons. Religion is neither new nor unexpected as a source of oppressive and aggressive violence, it was the history of christian europe, taoist, shintoist and buddhist asia, greek and mayan societies as well as practiced by regimes of all types.

Humankind needs to look ahead and work to reform its political institutions. We are capable for the first time in human history of using collective intelligence to work on complicated questions. The deep transformations of the coming eras of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and biotechnology will render all current political issues meaningless. It is time we face today the questions that will matter in the long term. Our governments' habit of satisfaction with short-sighted solutions must be parted with. We must complete the final improvemements that will finally accomplish truly democratic societies. Many people still wonder how to define democracy, when in fact it is not something that can be idealized but achieved. I fail to see how we can achieve anything, let alone democracy itself, without an actual coherent effort in political decision-making.