In the Same Light as Slavery: Building a Global Antiterrorist Consensus
Abstract
". . . to make clear that all acts of terrorism are illegitimate so that terrorism will be viewed in the same light as slavery, piracy, or genocide: behavior that no respectable government can condone or support and all must oppose." ...National Security Strategy of the United States, 2002. It did not take long after 9/11 for the American government and public to realize that a critical obstacle to combating terrorism effectively was the surprising willingness of people in many parts of the world to excuse or, worse yet, applaud terrorist acts, depending on the cause in whose name they were committed. Notwithstanding the enormity of the attacks on New York and Washington and the wave of sympathy for the United States expressed in most quarters in the immediate aftermath, simply reaching international agreement on the meaning of terrorism proved impossible once someone intoned the mantra that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." To overcome the attitudes that generated support for terrorism among key elements of the world's population, the Bush administration concluded that it would be necessary to build a global antiterrorism consensus. Working from the grassroots up, the United States would persuade people that the intentional use of violence against noncombatants for political ends was evil in itself regardless of the merits of the cause to which terrorism was used. The administration's recognition of the need to undertake such an effort found its most memorable public expression in the words quoted in the epigraph above.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA471253
Entities
People
- C. C. Fair
- Caroline F. Ziemke
- Hady Amr
- Joseph Mcmillan
- Kumar Ramakrishna
- Mark Tessler
- Peter W. Singer
- Scott Atran
- Steven N. Simon
Organizations
- National Defense University