How to defeat terrorism

The 9/11 report is a famous document of course, which claimed it wanted to improve "security" in the United States and prevent terrorism coming into America.the problem with this is that its recommendations are absolutely ineffective in actually fighting terrorism.

The reality of terrorism in the United States is that:

• White Americans are the largest perpetrator of hate crimes in America, targeted against people of color. Even when the evidence is obvious, these people sometimes don't go to prison, such as with the case of Trayvon Martin's murder. FBI Non-Hispanic Whites are underrepresented however, representing only 57% of hate crime perpetrators for which race was known, despite being 63% of the population according to the Census Bureau. African Americans were overrepresented according to the data from 2015. Despite being 10% of the population over 50% of assaults motivated by race were against African Americans as well. Assault was the most common type of hate crime in America. Murder was the least common of all. The FBI does not carry information on the income levels of perpetrators and victims unfortunately, which I wish was there. This topic deserves a full post on its own. Most terrorism in the United States is labeled as a hate crime, the differences between them are vague, and it makes sense to see them lumped together.
• The individuals who attacked us in 2001 are not covered by the ESTA, they all had applied for and received visas. They were also mostly Saudi, a country which stands idly by as their wealthy citizens support ISIS. There was also one Egyptian, two Emiratis, and one Lebanese man. These countries all require visas to the United States, and all of these individuals had received visas from the embassy. The Atlantic shows that the total number of Americans killed on American soil by Europeans remains at 0.
• The ESTA does not stop terrorism, it only decreases tourism. Reducing the people to people contacts between the United States and the rest of the world isolates us from our allies and hurts our image abroad. Having fewer people to people contacts with the rest of the world means that the only thing that people see on the news is drone bombing, police shooting, terrorist attack, and more nonsense. The news tends to blow situations out of proportion, as it did during the Köln bombings a few years ago. I was fortunate to be able to contact my friend who lives in Köln, a city I have personally traveled to and learned that what the media was portraying was extremely inaccurate. There were protests but the city was far from being shut down. Reducing the number of people who know Americans will make us see each other as dangerous places to travel, when in reality we are both generally safe, especially Europe. Proof which includes regressional analysis.
• No Canadian has ever committed a terrorist attack in the United States. No individual born in Europe has ever attacked the United States.

If we were serious about fighting terrorism we would do the following:

• Nation build in the Middle East and increase the number of people from those countries who study in the USA. Increasing people to people links foster communication and dialogue.
• End the ESTA program, replacing it with 90 day visa-free travel for its current members and expand visa-free travel to all of Europe except Russia and Belarus, along with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa, Botswana, most of East Africa, Thailand, and more countries. If an individual overstays their visa-free period we can bar that individual from coming, but not as a mass punishment. This will increase tourism and people-to-people contacts around the world.
• Stop the drone bombings. They are counter productive by serving as a recruitment tool.
• Pressure countries around the world to increase economic mobility. Most suicide bombers are in poverty.
• Pressure Saudi Arabia to stop sheltering extremists. King Fahd spent at least $75 billion during his reign to spread terrorism across the world, making Saudi Arabia the number one sponsor of Terrorism across the world, and the number one killer of American citizens besides ourselves. This is not money from Saudi nationals, this is money from the crown, which is indistinguishalbe from the government. Despite this, Saudi Arabia was not on the list of countries which Trump banned tourism from and continue to import their oil which funds the government, which is a known state sponsor of terrorism. Wikipedia They now take an approach of not cracking down on the plutocrats who fund ISIS while being militarily involved in fighting ISIS as well. This is a perfect example of the military industrial complex at work reaping billions off the suffering of Syrians. This is evil and must be stopped.

We have been lucky to not have a major terrorist attack like 9/11 since 2001, but the real reasons why 9/11 happened have not been targeted by our government effectively. We continue to do drone bombings instead of nation building in countries which have the lowest approval rating of Americans in the world, and refuse to do the necessary measures to stem the flow of money from our so-called military allies to terrorist groups. These action would actually improve our image and standing in the world, stemming the conversion of people to terrorist ideologies. Terrorism is not the root cause, it is a disease of a much larger problem. Fighting terrorism the way we do would be like trying to fight obesity only by taking care of children once they become obese while still serving McDonald's quality food in school cafeterias. This wouldn't make sense to most people, but is the same approach that the United States government has taken to fighting terrorism.

Our current policies to fight terrorism would be like fighting obesity by limiting access to uncooked vegetables in school cafeterias. Our current policies to fight terrorism only make the problem worse, as the research has shown.

If I were hired with my international politics education to design a policy plan in order to increase terrorism across the world based on the research I would do the following:

1. Increase barriers to travel globally, to make people see only  the bad things in other countries.
2. Increase support for state sponsors of terrorism.
3. Create a culture of fear and intimidation in the media that everyone is trying to attack everyone else.
4. Purposefully and indiscriminately bomb third world countries and support allies which create proxy wars in third world countries.
5. When we are done invading countries and bombing the bloody shit out of their civilians, do not build infrastructure or set up economic systems to give people a path to stability. This will increase the number of suicide bombers. Leave the people poor and angry, and they will want to kill you for destabilizing their home.

This is the ongoing policy of the US government and powerful interest groups.

We need to fight the root causes of terrorism if we are ever to increase peace and prosperity across the world, and ensure that the policies we have in place which we claim are there to reduce terrorist attacks actually work. The current policy of the United States government only increases terrorism globally and must be reversed as soon as possible.

The Left has a choice to make on peace

Foreign policy usually takes the back burner when it comes to politics. Neither party in America pushes hard for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, human rights in China or North Korea, or other important issues. The left however has a large split today, and that is between people who support free trade and people who support tariffs, because of the negative effects of some free trade agreements.

Free trade has a number of large benefits. It allows people to find work in places that pay better and escape poverty in poorer countries (which has some disadvantages, nothing is perfect), it allows free travel to come on the scene which can fight the interethnic tensions and wars that often rise when travel is restricted. To have free travel you need free trade.

Free travel, the eventual elimination of customs between different countries and allowing people to move freely will have a lot of power to eliminate hatred between different groups of people. I strongly believe that if the people of Israel and Palestine could talk to each other and there were fewer restrictions on movement the conflict would diminish and they would find they have more in common than they believe. The same political debates, the same hopes, the same dreams, and the far right in both Israel and the PLO will fall making peace possible. I believe that if people from America and Mexico could easily talk to each other and we helped them fight the violence that ravages so many communities the racist tensions that exist with the far right in my country will have less influence. There are reasons why the southern border is a very Democratic area, even in Texas.

To do this requires free trade. Free trade will be the start, and then the left needs to get together and support free travel, and within the mechanisms of free trade labor needs to demand a living wage for an honest day's work. The status quo of no communication between nations brought more conflict and allowed people like Hitler to get entire nations to do the unspeakable, because most people didn't know what the other side was actually like. There is a reason there have been no wars within the EU (an previously EC) since World War II. Personally, I believe free travel is a critical part to world peace, and is worth the costs of free trade. I also don't see how the costs of free trade are permanent.

Israel

Israel is a great country. There are people of many ethnicities with Israeli citizenship. There is freedom of religion. There is freedom of speech and many different freedoms for all of her citizens.

However, the Gaza Strip and many parts of the West Bank do not have the same rights as Israel. They are led by terrorist organizations that do not have the good of the people in mind. By having citizenship for Muslims difficult, possible, but difficult to achieve most good citizens of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank cannot fulfill the requirements to become citizens of Israel. If there is to be peace, I think that everyone who has lived in Israel and Palestine since they were born or the creation of Israel should be offered citizenship without any other qualifications. This would take away a major recruitment tool from the terrorists Hamas and Hezbollah which would diffuse the situation. Israel will not fall if they do this because Jews are now the majority of the land. They would become like South Africa or the United States where there are many different ethnic groups coexisting with equal rights for all.

I believe Israel to be a good country. I believe that all peoples should have equal rights. I also believe the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a good Document to determine the most important rights. Peace is possible.

Recipe for World Peace

Throughout the world we can see many things, revolutions, tyrants, freedom, and other things throughout the world. The United States has 300 million people and according to the Department of Commerce 2007 US Resident Travel Abroad, collected presumably by customs forms, we travel mostly to European countries and places in North America and least to poor nations and most Middle Eastern nations, with an obvious exception to Egypt. A total of 64,052 Americans traveled abroad in 2007. This makes 240,000 Americans who did not.

Most Americans have never traveled outside the United States. Their experience with the world is severely limited and any experience they have with the outside world is limited to what they get through the media. This is a problem because we are the most powerful nation in the world and our citizens should all have some experience with other cultures whether they are as similar as Canada, or as different as Japan, both nations which made the list.

I think that Americans age 11 and up should be offered to travel somwhere outside the country as part of a delegation no matter how wealthy their parents are. As it is currently, the students that are able to travel are children of people with lots of money. This makes the vast majority of Americans unable to travel outside, giving them a very limited viewpoint. This is not good because then when the media consistently talks about one nation or another distorting the facts, most Americans have no one to confirm these facts with or to use their own experience to prove or disprove the media's story. Beyond this, this makes many people outside of the world that are not exposed to Americans to have a very unfavorable view of us because they have never met a single American. I think of countries in and near the Middle East and other places with extremely unfavorable view of us who have not met any truly normal American, only rich businesspeople.

Another problem with this is that people in most other countries cannot come to America easily, they need to apply for a Visa which is an expensive and time-consuming process that turns most away from visiting America. I think of people from despotic governments that do not know what another lifestyle is like, having lived their entire lives in their own country. They have nothing to compare their place to and do not know how people in free nations live. This is why I am opposed to Visas. Visas do not stop terrorists, as we saw in 2001, and most of the countries that require visas do not have any terrorism anyways. All of the people in the Western Hemisphere, Southern Africa, East Asia, and Europe should be able to visit America Visa-free. By doing this when someone has an unfavorable view of us in those places someone will be able to tell them what we are really like and fight the messages of how terrible we are coming from some foreign media outlets. More than this, they will be able to see how we live and take home the ideas of our types of freedom, improving their lives at home. This happens in America with many Americans who have traveled to Canada seeing their health care system imagining how its post-2003 reform efficiency could be implemented here.

The economical benefits to making tourism easier are immense. By exposing local businesses to currently inaccessible income from tourists people make less money than they would otherwise, which hurts our economy. Our cities would become wealthier and the people who make the city would have more money to do things they want.

Some tourists will choose to visit small towns throughout the country. This will expose many people in rural America to tourists from many parts of the world that would fight xenophobia, and expose currently isolated Americans to other viewpoints and cultures. Also, these small towns would get income they otherwise wouldn't have. It would make rural traditionalists wary when pundits speak against a minority. This will improve our attitude and face in the world. We have nothing to lose.

This would be an excellent way to improve our relations with the rest of the world. I think it could be done by either by private, non-profit, or public institutions. However, it is easy to see that the current system for non-profits does not get as much done as could be, so it should be improved.

If you are interested in this, look at People to People, a non-profit organization that was founded by President Eisenhower to promote world peace through understanding: www.ptpi.org