This post is in English, since as opposed to most of the posts in this blog, this is about something global.
Since the last attacks in Mumbai, I’ve been thinking on what can be done to deal with this (almost impossible to understand for our rational minds) phenomenon of terrorism. As opposed to previous attacks, where I felt personally «involved» (attacks in Israel, or Amia in Argentina), this time I think I can have a more distant look at the problem, which usually helps when analyzing.
Is obvious that it is impossible to prevent all the terrorist attacks (I dont want to even imagine what percentage of attacks are being prevented at one stage or other, if half of these prevented attacks would succeed our life would be a completely chaos). Some may argue that we could focus in the sources of fanatism, and I guess we should, but doesnt look simple, and is a very looooooooooonnnnngggggg term solution.
So I was thinking that the way to deal with it is by finding a way to make this attacks have an effect exactly opposed to what the terrorists plan, so this will obvioulsy des-motivate the attackers.
What do I mean?
Lets take the case of Mumbai, what is the effect the terrorist want to cause with this attacks?
Is hard to enter these criminal minds, but it seems that one of the motivations is to stop the normal cause of living, create panic so people stop with their normal activities, turists stop coming to visit, business people stop coming for meetings, etc. Basically, disrupt normal life, stop economic development, etc
What if we had the means to inmediately restore normal life, and even provide economic growth to attacked cities? in this case, the whole motivation of the terrorists would dissapear……
Imagine if next week we would have in Mumbai a huge business conference, a great rock concert, and a big cricket international tournament? Plenty of tourists, international business people and stars?
Basically we need an non-profit organization with enough funds (still nothing compared with how much is terrorism costing to the world economy), ready to deploy such activities in zero time (inmediacy is critical here), acting as a «contracyclical reaction to terrorist attacks».
Hard to know if this would success but may be worth a try.
I’ve done my part….. the good thing of being a blogger is that you dont need to keep asking whether is a good idea or not, just post it, and if it is good enough it may reach the appropriate person and, who knows, it may happen one day…….
Pablo Brenner & Sergio Fogel Blog 
I think that the idea is great, but not realistic.
For example, would you let your daughter or son go to a music concert in a place where a terrorist attack has happened 5 days ago?
The reality is that people is scared, not only by facts, a simply rumor is enough to make people stay at home for some weeks…
So, we have to change people head, wich is also a long term solution…
I think your analysis of the motivation behind the attack is in the best case, naive. People usually has stronger motivations than «alter normal people» or «envy our freedom» or any other nonsense.
When people resort to violence to accomplish what they need you can usually classify them in two groups:
1) Religious fanatics.
Those who believe that holy war may lead us to Valhalla with a hundred virgins. These is the category where some muslim radicals enter, but you can follow Richard Dawking’s writings and you will find at the end that no religion is «free from sin»(the root of all evil)
2) Oppressed people with no choices.
Most Palestinian attacks on Israel classify in this category. People with no home, no chance to live, no opportunity, kicked out from their homes and their family killed.
I don’t justify attacks at all, but as long as the reasoning is that a terrorist is a «madman from axis of evil» we won’t be able to move on and analyze the real cause behind someone blowing up himself into pieces just to prove a point.
Culture clashing may be a cause of violence too(mahoma stamps being the most recent episode), hard to handle this one on a globalized world.
By the way I have no idea of the motivations behind these attack on India, political or religious. Someone to shed some light on it? I’ve read something about pakistan being involved?
JP, while i agree with you on most of what you say, I think we should differentiate between the terrorist physically perpetrating the attack (these are the guys expecting the hundred virgins, and or the people with no home, no chance to live, etc), from the guys planning the attacks.
I think that believing that the guys planning the attacks are poor guys without opportunities is being naive.
The planning and training for these extensive coordinated attacks requires thinking, planning and lots of resources.
And even when these guys have long term plans, and lots of patience (which I understand is the most complicated part of the whole story), the mechanism they are using against the «occidental society» is disturbing our way of live, understanding that our frustration bar is much lower than theirs.
Im not saying that this solves the problem, as you say the problem is way too complicated, i simply think that this may make this tool ineffective for their means (the problem is that they will look for other tools)
M.A. I wouldnt let my daughter go to a concert in mumbai next week, but I would probably go myself, and i guess we can find a couple of thousand people like me 😉
Why is everone writing in english?
Is kind a new fashion for terrorist attacks debates?
[…] código .net, no he tenido tiempo de poner nada original, sin embargo, hoy me encontré con un artículo de Pablo Brenner que tiene varias […]
I think terrorism have too many press (that it wishes). Cutting or limitating press the phenommena will have less trascendence.
I think this is article is a good «short term» reaction.
Now here’s another about long term measures! Really long term !
3 ways to curb terrorism Please comment !
I rarely write remarks, but i did a few searching and
wound up here Dealing with terrorism | Pablo Brenner & Sergio Fogel
Blog. And I actually do have a couple of questions
for you if you do not mind. Could it be only me or does it appear like some of the responses come across like coming from brain dead folks?
😛 And, if you are writing on other social sites, I would
like to follow anything fresh you have to post. Would
you make a list of the complete urls of all your shared sites like your linkedin profile,
Facebook page or twitter feed?
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What are Mark Zuckerberg’s blog posts in the movie «The Social Network»?