It would be nice if humanity was able to learn from history, from events, but there is not much hope we can. The attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, eight years ago, could have taught us many things. The terrorism of Al Qaeda is operated by wealthy men like Bin Laden who cannot certainly be considered an oppressed minority. Yet such men acting for political and economic purposes found in the Islamic countries many young people willing to die for their "cause."
From this tragedy we should have learnt how important it was to establish better relations with the rest of the world that for centuries the West has exploited doing business with local elites of the so-called developing countries without creating much real wealth in these countries, but leaving most of the population in poverty. The image of the West in the rest of the world is very bad, because there everybody knows that our wealth comes not from our work and our intelligence, as we would like to believe, but from our ability to deceive, rob and use organized violence on mass scale. September 11 and the subsequent major attacks in Madrid and London should have taught us the urgent need not just to fight terrorists, but also to eliminate their breeding ground by showing a willingness to balance the world, to make it fairer. Today, 8 years after the attack, Al Qaeda seems in crisis and anyway was obvious that it would never have obtained its goal, to cause a clash of civilizations between the West and the Middle East, despite what Bush has done to help them.
The Muslim world is diverse and divided as much as the West, the idea to unite it under islamic law is fantasy as the idea that the West could become a theocracy united under the Vatican. It's very unlikely that the world can go back to medieval times, and at the West and the Middle East have never been two monolithic blocks even in medieval times.
The Muslim world is diverse and divided as much as the West, the idea to unite it under islamic law is fantasy as the idea that the West could become a theocracy united under the Vatican. It's very unlikely that the world can go back to medieval times, and at the West and the Middle East have never been two monolithic blocks even in medieval times.
What should be done to defeat terrorism is to establish a more equitable relationship with Middle East countries to create real development in all social groups, real democracy and less conflict. Religion has little or nothing to do with it. People are willing to die for their ideals when they have no alternative. But if they can live, start a family and work to really improve their condition fanaticism becomes much less attractive.
In specific cases obviously western countries should never have started the Iraq war, in a country that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and also in Afghanistan, once removed the Talibans, the western bombings should have stop and the military presence minimized, maybe spending more money for development and less for weapons. In Palestine western countries should have put pressure on Israel to withdraw settlements from the West Bank, which instead increased, and to gave the Palestinians their state. But none of this happened. The Obama's speech in Cairo seemed to be the beginning of a new era in relations between the West and the Middle East, but so far we have yet to see a big change. Western governements continue to talk about a greater commitment in Afghanistan, even if public opinion is largely hostile to the idea. And the current Israeli government seems unwilling to make any real concession to the Palestinians.
And if the West continues this way, not learning anything, Al Qaeda can be defeated but the latent conflict between the West and the islamic world will continue in one form or another for many years more.
Francesco Defferrari
Francesco Defferrari
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