Sara Gay's thoughts on the question of terrorism

Sara Gay left this as a comment to our initial welcome to the blog. I think it's too important to be left as a comment, so I'm re-posting it.

SG said...
Thank you for setting this up. Let's examine the whole question of terrorism and counter terrorism, as major candidates are saying troops will need to be in Iraq for many years. My thinking, in part based on personal experience in the Middle East and Asia, is that as long as our policy is to counter terrorism with military force we will continue to create terrorists.

A military approach to terrorism inevitably means the deaths of innocents (Americans and Iraqis and Afghanis and others)and while we may capture or kill one or two real terrorists we anger too many others who then join the terrorists because they see no other future.Our foreign policy needs to focus on the root causes of terrorism. We need to understand the frustrations, the culture, the reasons more and more people see America as the bully, robbing other countries of their natural resources for the benefit of corporations and our own wasteful lifestyles.

A lot of change needs to happen at home. And we certainly need a major change at the top of our government.

To that end I think it would be interesting if we could find a speaker who can talk to these issues knowledgeably. Most likely not someone local but someone with some gravitas. Let's search. I think we could get a forum easily.

September 29, 2007 6:22 AM