fighting terrorism   

   *…with a primary focus on fighting: U.S. forms of terrorism

            More important, [Schriner] said, is addressing the “whole set of precipitating factors” behind the terrorist attacks.  –The Athens (OH) Post 11/12/01

            Standing in solidarity with Athens, Ohio, residents during a peace vigil on the town square shortly after 9/11, I held a sign that read:  “Let’s Not Respond With More Violence and Suffering.”  --Joe

            I told the Sanford (ME) News that if a kid grows up in dead-end inner city poverty here, they are more apt to join: a gang.  If a kid grows up in dead-end abject poverty in the Third World, they are more apt to join: a terrorist cell.  To impact some of terrorism at its roots, we have to impact more Third World poverty.  --Joe

            *Note:  “Terrorism toward the United States isn’t happening in a vacuum.  That is, some of our actions are creating rising anger and resentment worldwide.  While on one hand, our administration would work to protect Americans from immediate terrorism threats through solid Homeland Security efforts; our approach would also be multilateral. 

Our administration would analyze which U.S. actions (nuclear weapons build-up, training foreign paramilitary groups in terror techniques, exploiting other countries resources, promoting free trade that undercuts subsistence farmers in the Third World, etc.) are provoking other countries.  And then we would work stridently to change these things.

In addition, we would work just as hard to reverse conditions leading to the ‘terrorism’ we generate in our own country. That is, some 4,400 babies are killed in the womb every day in America.  The disparity between the haves and have nots is leaving abandoned inner city cores where terror (murders, gang violence, drugs and hunger) reins in L.A., Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland…  School shootings and child abductions are increasing. The terror of domestic violence – driven by drug and alcohol addiction or trans-generational abuse cycles -- is currently rising exponentially”  --Joe

            the points:

~strategic Homeland Security initiatives against bio-terror, dirty bombs, cyber terror to electronic linkages connecting transportation, energy, commerce, food…

             however, no physical or mental torture of terror suspects

             however, no unauthorized NSA phone wire tapping of U.S. citizens

             however, no National ID Card and/or biochip implant for tracking     purposes

~end U.S. ‘nuclear terrorism’  (we have thousands of nuclear missiles aimed all over the world).

            “What if we let the weapons inspectors into Montana?”  [Asked Joe.]  –ABC News, Toledo, Ohio.

~end U.S. ‘food terrorism’ (hoarding, over-consuming and wasting a tremendously disproportionate amount of food, while 24,000 people starve to death every day in the Third World and billions of others are exceedingly undernourished).

            In Vermont, Cambodia Maryknoll Fr. Jim Noonan told me Americans are “food terrorists” of the worst kind.  That is, 3,000 people died in the World Trade Centers, while eight times that number starve to death daily, in part, because of our lack of compassion and sacrifice.  (We could help so much more.)

~end U.S. ‘environmental terrorism.’

            During a talk on environmental stewardship in Wellington, Ohio, I said we produce the most global warming greenhouse gases, by far, of any country in the world.  Then during an interview with the Mount Vernon (OH) News, I said this is like a bunch of terrorists shooting “slow motion bullets” at countries experiencing climate change related droughts, super-charged hurricanes and typhoons, receding glaciers that is drying up crop irrigation…

~stop the U.S. School of the America’s terror training of foreign military, and para-military groups to help promote U.S. interests. 

           (As a presidential candidate, I stood in solidarity with people protesting to close the School of the America’s.)

~stop U.S. forms of ‘free trade terrorism.’

            As an example, we parlay huge corporate profits into buying mega, high-tech farms.  And with the help of free trade (which the U.S. has pushed for), we are now able to undercut subsistence farmers selling to their local markets in, say, Guatemala.

~stop U.S. ‘cultural terrorism’

            Author Richard Horsley in his book Religion and Empire said the 9/11 terrorist attacks were, in part, motivated by those “angry at the western capitalist consumerism that has invaded their lives and undermined their traditional values.”  Our media/entertainment industry is now regularly beaming a steady fare of sexually explicit and violent imagery into these countries, which are also undermining cultural values.

~stop U.S. ‘eugenics terrorism’

            With abortion we have become our own worst terrorists,” said Schriner. – The Range News (Arizona).

~assess other significant roots of terrorism

            Iraq sanctions that were responsible for the deaths of almost 1 million people.

            U.S. backed Israeli military.

            U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia

            Allowing so much abject Third World poverty, while much of the Western World lives so affluently in comparison.

            I attended a talk by William Hartung, who is a President’s Fellow for the World Policy Institute.  He said there is tremendous economic inequality worldwide and he added there should be more “programs for constructive opportunities for youth in the Third World (so there’s less motivation to join a terrorist cell).”

 ~What if the Amish were in charge of the War on Terror?

            In a Sojourner Magazine article, Diana Butler Bass noted that the Amish practice of forgiveness (in Nickels Mines, PA after the shooting of the school children) unfolded in four public acts… They were actively “making peace,” she wrote.

            During a talk in Oberlin, Ohio, I posed:  “What if we started to fight terrorism with forgiveness?” 

            We also propose a U.S. Department of Peace, intended to improve international relations significantly.