Terrorism

Choices about Terrorism.

• What are the root causes of terrorism?
• Can terrorism be eliminated?
• If not, how we deal with it?

Discussion:

• Today, it is apparent that conventional armed forces are not effective in containing or resolving terrorism.
• Should our armed forces continue to be used to fight terrorism?
• If not, what sort of social and police initiatives are required to end terrorism?
• It seems that terrorism is as much a cultural issue as anything else (all cultures have the potential for creating terrorists, albeit some more than others). You do not change culture with guns.
• Could the money spent on fighting terrorism using conventional armed forces be better spent elsewhere?
• By the end of the twentieth century, terrorists were able to kill dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of people primarily through suicide bombings.
• In the twenty-first century, technology is progressing so rapidly that terrorists will soon have the ability to kill millions using biological or genetic means. It may even be possible to effectively wipe out all human life on our planet using such means, and yet we continue to invest billions in jets, submarines and other conventional weapons. None of these weapons are likely to be effective against the use of such technology. We can make a choice to proactively consider radically different options.
• With current technology or technology soon to be available, it will be possible to record the location of 100% of the population 24 hours a day. It will also be possible to record everything people say 24 hours a day. And in the not too distant future, it will be possible to capture videos of everyone 24 hours a day. And all of this can be done wireless and securely encrypted. Human eyes would never have to see this data unless a criminal act was being committed. Computers could monitor all the data and flag only those criminal acts or plans to commit criminal acts and only under those circumstances would there be human intervention, which in itself would be monitored and subject to accountability.
• Radical, yes! But our choice may be to risk the death of millions or implement some sort of secure monitoring system.
• As the technology to have such monitoring either exists today, or will exist very soon, so too the technology exists, or will exist very soon, to implement such a system securely with extremely effective safeguards against abuse. In fact, the monitoring system is a self correcting system since it would flag any abuse of the system.
• Such a system could even pay for itself since the number of crimes and their related costs would likely decrease dramatically.
• We have a choice of considering such radical solutions or wait until some horrendous terrorist event occurs and then react to that event with subsequent knee-jerk solutions that are not well thought out and which are likely to be much less secure and subject to abuse. The history of 9/11 teaches us that.

What do you think? Are there other radical choices we should consider? Ask yourself "What are my choices?"