You should read a book by Robert Baer called See No Evil. He was a CIA agent that worked in the middle east in the 80's and 90's and he really lays into our government about how we just stopped caring about the middle east and how many of the terrorist attacks that have happened could have been stopped if they would have kept agents in the field collecting intelligence instead of falling back and relying to heavily on satellites and the internet.
I think you can't stop terrorism but you can curb it. Here are a few thoughts.
1. Education. In the US we have a very small number of people that are obscenely rich and a small number that are extremely poor and most fall somewhere in the middle class. No matter how much money you have you can get an education. In many middle eastern countries there are a small number of very rich and a massive number that are very VERY poor. When you are starving and barely surviving and someone offers you food and money and a chance to go to school you start to listen to them. When they start telling you that the US is to blame for your hardship, you have no reason not to believe it. Your education becomes one of extremism, not a typical education. We need to find a way to increase the general education level of these people so they are not taught by extremist.
2. The spread of information. many countries in the middle east have government controlled TV, internet, newspapers, radio, ect. If you grow up your whole life being told someone is evil and you never see anything suggesting otherwise, you start to believe it. We need help break these censor barriers down and get information into people's hands and let them see what the rest of the world is like and that we aren't evil, just different.
3. Oil. We need to curb our dependence on oil. The more oil we need from over there the more influence we want to have in that region and they don't like us telling them how to live or what do to. They see us as pushing ourselves on them and we do it because we want that oil. If we don't need that oil we have less interest in that region and thus our influence will yield and they will have one less reason to hate us.
4. You can't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun. We have to stop invading and threatening military action. First off it doesn't work. These are people that are willing to blow themselves up to kill us, do we think the threat of shooting them will scare them. For every terrorist we kill in Iraq we make 5 more with our occupation of Iraq. Now we are threatening Iran. Maybe Iran is a legit threat. Maybe we should have gone after them and not Iraq, but regardless of the truth many people in the middle east see us as warmongers that will just invade anyone that doesn't agree with them. See my above comments as to why this is dangerous and why they won't easily change their minds.
5. Reward democracy. If countries start having democratic elections and they start putting reasonable people in power that speak out against terrorism, we should reward those countries in some way. Get the money and rewards into the hands of the people. Last year when Israel invaded Lebanon and blew up a bunch of buildings Hezbollah members went to those that lost their homes and handed them cash to replace it. With that money and support they just got themselves a new sympathizer or member. We need to do the same.
And last we need to kick the CIA into high gear again. Start recruiting and training agents and get them on the ground. Let them find and stop terrorist while they are still small and less powerful.
Anyway, sorry for the long post, just some thoughts I had.
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