Beating Terrorism will take Understanding, Tough Talk and Tougher Action

Something went wrong with airport security in Amsterdam on Christmas. Fortunately, thanks to fast action by some heroes onboard a U.S. airplane bound for Detroit, crisis was averted.

Today, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airplane. They praised the “brother” who carried out the “heroic” act and threatened to send more “men who love to die.” I know nothing about the Arabian Peninsula chapter of the well known hate fraternity. However, the issuance of a media statement three days after the incident smells to me a little like I am sure the airplane toilet did where the suspect prepared himself for his so-called brave act. Surely if the frat had a hand in this they would have been a bit quicker to claim their involvement. Maybe they were busy with other chapter activities.

We need to remind ourselves about how terrorism works. Trying to bring down a jetliner is an atrocious crime that can be defined as terrorism, but it is how we react to the first act that determines the amount of the damage the aggressor(s) is ultimately able to do. In this case, the opportunistic group mentioned above is making hay by trying to scare Americans and utilizing the worldwide press attention as a recruitment tool. Friday’s incident should be a wakeup call for those involved in airplane security and it should be a reminder to the rest of us that we live in a dangerous world. But, let’s keep focused on who we are and for what we stand.

Today’s blogs and opinion pieces are rife with calls for action to stand up and fight “radical Islam.” One writer posed the question, “will non-Islamic nations surrender to radical extremists or will we fight back and destroy them?” I find the writer’s narrow focus on “non-Islamic nations” interesting. Evidently for him, either Islamic nations and “we” are mutually exclusive, or these Islamic nations have already surrendered to the radical extremists. If the Islamic nations have surrendered to the extremists, is the writer suggesting we need to “destroy” these countries too? No matter how I look at it, this writer and the others like him are behaving just like the terrorists want them to. They are drawing up sides based on fear, cleaving off those who belong to a particular religion, and arbitrarily defining who is “us” and who is “them.”

There are real and imminent threats to our country, its citizens and freedom in the world. We need to stand up to those who threaten us and root them out. However, if our reaction to a single act of terrorism is to paint large portions of the world as enemies by branding them Islamic and us as non-Islamic, the amount of damage wrought by one guy fresh from the latrine is going to mushroom for the terrorist brotherhood.

We will win the war on terrorism if we remember that freedom means standing with those who share our values, even if they choose to worship differently than we do. It is not us against the Islamic world. It is us against the terrorists, whether they are an individual acting alone, a group hiding in caves in the Pakistani mountains, or some other group lurking in the shadows in another corner of the world. If we beat our chests and close ourselves off from a large portion of the world’s population, the terrorists will win. If we limit freedom to only a select group, those who look like us, worship as we do and share our heritage; we will fall far short of reaching the great promise America holds.

This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.