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Government And Terrorism
Added: (Thu Aug 31 2006)
Government And Terrorism
Kamala Sarup
We all know that terrorists are targeting and killing small children. Children die from being "in the way" for the killing of adults by terrorists. From the news, it seems that lots of innocent people are in the way of the combatants or are deliberately targeted by terrorists. These include grown men and women as well as children, if they accompany parents. Like in Iraq or Afghanistan many children were targeted by violence and war. Like when the violent groups kill children and adults. Violent groups kill innocent adults.
In the U.S., the policy seems to be to protect the most vulnerable public places, and these are gov't buildings, utilities, schools, etc. I don't see any concentration of protection for U.S. children. With regard to them, American also need more protection against U.S. pedophiles and U.S. crazy gunmen and gun children.
Since human behavior is a combination of genes and environment ("nature and nurture"), your proposed solutions might help the environmentally induced aggression, but not our genetically induced aggression. Therefore, aggression will always be with us, not matter what environment is established. However, considering the latter as a way to at least reduce aggression somewhat, consider that asocial behavior of all kinds is a consequence of the combination ignorance, aggression, and greed, formal education partially helps employment partially helps good parenting helps but nobody pays any attention to that source of our problems, so what you propose are only partial solutions. As for "good government", that would help all three problems indirectly by promoting employment, education, parenting, etc., but that concept must be translated into specific programs to be meaningful.
Good government requires cooperation among the government representatives of the people to get things accomplished that are useful to the people rather than the representatives themselves. When representatives are immobile because they cannot agree on courses of action to help each others constituents and/or they are selfish and care more about their individual wealth rather than the wealth of the people in general, then the people will continue to be in trouble in violence.
Violence as "the murder of innocents", i.e., non-military, non-police, and non-politicians. The army is used by the government to protect the general population from foreign and domestic aggressors.
Armies and police can defend the country against violence, but are ineffective against isolated attacks. Outside the country, an army can assist to defeat terrorism, but cannot accomplish that alone because terrorists are not found in armies. Only way to defeat terrorism and violence is to assist police and intelligence. However, it will take a long time.
These groups can survive longer if they become immune within a country. That is why it is important to bring them to justice. The deaths and the property losses after attack cannot be restored completely no matter how much money other countries send.
We certainly can defeat violence and terrorism if we spend lots more time, money and create awareness to do so over a long period of time. Whether or not we will be willing to make these sacrifices to achieve these objectives is indeterminable at this time.
A Nepali Journalist and Story Writer Kamala Sarup is specialising in in-depth reporting and writing on Peace,Anti War, Women, Terrorism, Anti Fascism, Democracy, and Development. Some of her publications are: Women's Empowerment (Booklet). Prevention of trafficking in women through media,(Book) Efforts to Prevent Trafficking in for Media Activism (Media research). Two Stories collections. Her interests include international conflict resolution, cross-cultural communication, philosophy, feminism, political, socio-economic and literature. Her current plans are to move on to humanitarian work in conflict areas in the near future. She also is experienced in organizational and community development.
Copyright kamala Sarup,2006.
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Kamala Sarup