It was reported on the news Tuesday morning that Vicente Fox, President of Mexico made a speech yesterday regarding Mexico’s decision not to support the US attempt to get a new resolution on Iraq through the UN. As part of that speech he said something to the effect that Mexico wants to win the war on terrorism without violence. The Administration of the US created this fiction of a “War on Terrorism” right after September 11 to give the appearance that they were doing something about the attack on America. Terrorism isn’t something you fight with armies and tanks, bombs and guns. Terrorism is something you fight with social change. This is only a war in the sense that the war on poverty was a war and the only way it will ever be won is without violence.

We had a war against the Taliban and we drove them out of Afghanistan.
We are now doing a bunch of war mongering with regard to Iraq but there is no military “War on Terrorism.” The whole point of terrorism is you can’t fight it. You just have to live with it until you can change the attitudes that lead to it.

Terrorism is a horrible thing that we must do everything in our power to eliminate. Frequently, terrorism is a by-product of religious fundamentalism. It is ridiculous to think you can counteract the forces of religious fundamentalism with military force. Fundamentalists believe that their way is the only way that can be allowed to exist and they must stamp out those who disagree with them. When the US moves in to replace Muslim regimes we look like we are taking this same intolerant stance with respect to Muslims. We must take strong action to show the world that we are not trying to eliminate those who disagree with us. We must take a strong stand against fundamentalism wherever we find it. If we hope to succeed, if we hope to have an internally consistent approach, we must take as strong a stand against the Christian fundamentalism that leads to white militia groups and to the bombing of abortion clinics as we do against Muslim fundamentalism that leads to bombing of the World Trade Center.

So what can we do about terrorism? What will work? How can we decide what will work and what won’t, how to proceed and where to start? There is a pretty good mental experiment that can be used to evaluate strategies for dealing with terrorism. No strategy will be effective with Muslim fundamentalists that would not be effective with Christian fundamentalists. If it wouldn’t work to fight the fundamentalism of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson it won’t work to fight the terrorism of Osama Ben Laden.

If we sent in troops and surrounded the state of Virginia and targeted our missiles on Lynchburg in an effort to shut down Liberty University, that hotbed of fundamentalism, do you think it would help solve the fundamentalist problem in the United States today? You can’t use military force to fight an idea.

The structure and organization of Islamic fundamentalism is analogous to the organization and structure of Christian fundamentalism in many ways. There is no centralized command. Many individuals, pastors of small rural churches, teach Christian fundamentalism to their congregations. Some of their members embrace the ideas fully some do not. There is no master list. There isn’t even a universally agreed upon list of beliefs or doctrines. Each of the thousands of small fundamentalist churches has it’s own unique beliefs. Several thousand such congregations exist in Eastern Kentucky alone. Where would you drop bombs to wipe out fundamentalism in Eastern Kentucky? If you sent in troops to ferret them out, whom would you hunt?

You have to fight ideas with ideas. Ideas are only changed through dialog. We must open channels of communication and through persistent, respectful, ongoing discussion and education we must foster open mindedness and tolerance. People fear the unfamiliar. Getting to know people who are different from you, who have different attitudes and beliefs from you, is the best way to develop open mindedness and tolerance. Fundamentalism grows best in a climate of ignorance and isolation. Shine the light of education and understanding on it and it withers.