Like most Americans, I believe we need to pursue strategies to bring terrorists to justice and, even more importantly, to prevent any future terrorist acts like that of Sept. 11. But the Bush administration and major corporate media outlets seem to equate prevention with military action. This is dangerous idealism, but the ideal in this instance isn't peace, but rather the history-defying principle that violence ends violence.
When a child strikes another child, the latter typically strikes back. Similarly, when Israelis kill Palestinians in an effort to enforce order, the latter typically responds with violence and vengeful rallies'not with cries for peace. In this most recent major case of violence, we are already seeing that many Muslims in the Middle East and Asia are responding to U.S. violence in Afghanistan with angry rallies and pronouncements threatening further violence. Violence doesn't end violence; violence breeds violence.
If we're serious about preventing terrorism in the future, we need to do more than arrest terrorists and improve security on airlines.
I have not heard anyone yet propose what strikes me as one of the most realistic, proven approaches to ending violence: to institute regular, open talks or town meetings, not between power-playing heads of state, but rather between ordinary Arabs, Israelis, Americans and citizens of other countries who are ordinarily so disconnected from each other. Researchers in Israel have done exactly this between Palestinian and Israeli youth and demonstrated considerable success in changing the opinions of the participants. There is much social science out there to corroborate these researchers' findings, but sadly it's rarely well publicized outside academic circles.
The closest anyone has come to recommending this was Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who urged the Bush administration to hold national town meetings on the terrorism and our response.
Repeated face-to-face discussion of differences challenges discussants to consider each other's points of view. As social scientist Robert Putnam remarked in his recent book, \Bowling Alone,"" ""without such face-to-face interaction, without immediate feedback, without being forced to examine our opinions under the light of other citizens' scrutiny, we find it easier to hawk quick fixes and to demonize anyone who disagrees.""
If governments fund such global town meetings and major corporate media cover them, they have the potential to reach millions, if not billions, and to accordingly multiply discussion, enrich understanding and nurture tolerance. Perhaps most importantly, such global town meetings have the powerful potential to reverse the usual order of things whereby politicians and terrorists dictate and citizens react. And arguably nothing would better and more rapidly bring us closer to real democracy'where citizens together govern themselves'across the world.
Sound hopelessly idealistic? I'll put the past record of deliberative democracy against the record of violent reaction any day, and we'll see who is more hopelessly idealistic.
