the terrorists struck again over the weekend in indonesia. there has been a long history of terrorist activity in that country. the fact it took this long for an attack to happen again is neither reassuring nor comforting.
perhaps we are taking the wrong approach in this war on terrorism. i’m not sure that military force will stop the true militant ideologues in the muslim world in al Qaeda from being evil and blowing things up. that said, getting rid of saddam was a good thing, and i’m not sorry he’s not ruler of iraq right now. i also believe that aside from the WMDs, he was complicit in aiding and abetting terrorists. this alone should be a good enough reason to remove him from power. my complaint is not with the iraq project, it is with the PR effort.
throughout our history, we have tried to solve problems by brute force and sometimes even diplomacy. the right approach is a balance of both. we need to come to an understanding that changing hearts and minds in the middle east is an incremental process. even countries with a long history of democracy still struggle with it, so we can’t expect iraq or its neighbors to embrace all the changes right away.
president bush has the right idea in trying to spread the ideals of freedom and democracy around the world. but when he appoints karen hughes to spearhead the effort, it makes one wonder whether he is taking this seriously. we should be able to come up with someone better to share our message and counter the anti-american rhetoric often represented on arab tv/radio. al-jazeera for example. when the voices of anti-american muslims are the only ones heard, what alternative do their listeners have? we have a good case to present to them. we need to do a better job in presenting this case.
even with our best diplomatic argument presented, it is possible that there will still be fanatics with explosives who remain unconvinced of america’s good intentions. there’s nothing we can do about that. the goal should be to convince the arab-speaking world not to support the fringe elements among them. we can achieve this. we just need the right people to represent us to the arab world.
Technorati : WMD, muslims, president bush, saddam hussein, terrorism