Asymmetric
Peace
By: Alon Stivi
To
win the war on terror and propagate world peace, we
need to better understand the use of fear as a weapon
and the dynamics of asymmetric warfare. The adaptation
of fear as a weapon is much more sophisticated than
just making us fearful for our lives. It is mostly
designed to make us fearful of one another.
We
must not forget that the ultimate goal of every terror
mastermind is to have its target adopt its "point
of view" and accept the terrorist's cause as
"legitimate". To achieve this, terrorists
aim to simultaneously spread fear and undermine people's
confidence in their government's ability to resolve
these fears.
To
create this level of mistrust, terrorists follow the
doctrine used by Nazi Germany and refined by the Soviets
propaganda machine to carry out a global anti-American
campaign. It is a calculated attempt at manipulating
the public opinion in order to portray American and
its allies as the aggressors and that their war on
terrorism has imperialistic ambitions. In addition
to direct actions, such as suicide bombings and kidnappings,
terrorists use rumors, misconceptions, stereotypes
and misguided popular beliefs to spread a message
of fear of "foreigners" and of the US "government",
furthering the resistance to the process of democratization
overseas and the the war effort at home.
The
following deceptive "messages" have been
systematically decimated by terrorist through politically
motivated Arab, European, Asian and liberal American
journalists and have become widely accepted by peoples
in the Middle East, Far East, Europe and even by some
Americans:
This
process of fear dramatization (exaggeration) feeds
the common human fascination with death and destruction
(or the misery of others) and provides simplistic
"explanations" that people can use to "cope"
with their terrorism related low-level anxiety. In
reality, aside from making for increased sales of
commercial airtime on TV and radio, the proliferation
of these misconceptions aids no one but the terrorists
themselves. Consequently, the proliferation of "The
Fear of America" may have as much of an impact
on the outcome of the war on terror as the fear of
terrorism itself.
Furthermore,
to maintain their recruiting base, terrorists must
also propagate the hatred of not just Americans but
of all non-Muslims in general. The most effective
use of this religious based hatred is found in the
tight social cliques of the mosques where the growing
sense of social identity among younger Muslim are
more readily transformed into a rationale for fanaticism
and a drive to embrace Jihad against the West. To
grow their armies of "hate warriors" and
to continue receiving both financial support and asylum,
terrorist leaders must adhere to the following guidelines:
