Terror in the Name of God

Terror in the Name of God:
Why Religious Militants Kill by Jessica Stern


"A few years ago I decided to do something scholars rarely do: I decided to talk with terrorists," is how Jessica Stern begins her remarkable book.

Stern, an expert on Terrorism and a lecturer on Terrorism at Harvard, did something no one else has done. She decided to learn more about what makes terrorist ticks by going to the source and interviewing them. Stern, in her introduction, is frank about her goals and her fears in traveling around the world, at risk to herself, in order to first hand talk with individuals who "kill in the name of God." And she is an equal opportunity researcher: she interviews Christian, Jewish and Islamic terrorists.

As someone who from time-to-time consults for the government, Stern doesn't have a partisan political agenda. We interviewed her and the name of Bush hardly came up, if at all. But she does have the desire to understand the motivations of terrorists in order to better fashion an effective strategy to reducing their omnipresent threat.

In short, although Stern doesn't take political sides, she does take a strategic position. And her position, after interviewing terrorists and gleaning insights, is that trying to reduce Terrorism requires a thoughtful, multi-faceted approach, because the causes of terrorism and the motivations of terrorists are varied.

Although Stern noted in our BuzzFlash interview with her that military action is sometimes necessary against terrorist command posts (although she opposed the invasion of Iraq), she asserts that "The terrorism we are fighting is a seductive idea, not a military target....I have come to see terrorism as a kind of virus, which spreads as a result of risk factors at various levels: global, interstate, national and personal."

The book is all the more compelling because it debunks the neanderthal "bring 'em on, wanted dead or alive" approach of Bush without being a polemic against him.

"In the end, however, what counts is what we fight for, not what we oppose. We need to avoid giving into spiritual dread, and to hold fast to the best of our principles, by emphasizing tolerance, empathy, and courage."

As Stern recounts her meetings with terrorists, she is remarkably candid in discussing her personal emotions and thoughts. Her extraordinary courage has yielded an invaluable insight into why we need a government with brains to take on terrorism and not a government of simple-minded radical zealots.

In a recent book about George W. Bush, written by sympathetic authors from the Hoover Institute, one unnamed Bush relative is quoted as saying that Bush sees the war on terrorism ''as a religious war'': ''He doesn't have a P.C. view of this war. His view of this is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know.''

"Terror in the Name of God." Who could be more ill-equipped to conduct a war against those who commit terror in the name of God than a man in the White House who commits terror in the name of God? (This is BuzzFlash's assessment, not Stern's.)

That's not Jessica Stern's question. That's ours, after reading her book. Her focus is on the terrorists. Our focus is on Bush's ineffective, incompetent, simple-minded response to terrorism.

After reading "Terror in the Name of God," it becomes even clearer to us that Bush's only dubious accomplishment is the implementation of policies that create more terrorism, not less. That's because, based on Stern's analysis of religious-based terrorism, Bush responds to terrorism exactly as terrorists would want him to, thus playing into their hands.

"Terror in the Name of God" is not likely to become a bestseller. It presents insights into fighting terrorism that are too complex for Americans -- and an administration -- who want to bludgeon a problem to death. Too bad. We are all less safe as a result -- and we are losing the battle against terrorism, because it requires a multi-pronged strategic approach, not just daisy cutter bombs and mercenary torturers in an Iraq prison.

http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/04/05/pre04008.html

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