Back in May, The Atlantic published an interview with terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman entitled "The Calculus of Terror." In the introduction, I found the meme repeated again.
. . . often the terrorists' goal is to provoke countries into responding in ways that aren't consonant with the values of a pluralistic democracy, thereby chipping away at the government's moral authority.
Far be it from me to take issue with a world-renowned terrorism expert (if this is, in fact, his premise), but I continue to believe there's faulty thinking here.
Look. If you believe that a pluralistic democracy is a good thing, something that strengthens and nourishes the society it serves, then undermining pluralism could be seen as an effective weapon against an enemy. But if you believe that a pluralistic democracy is a bad thing, a sign of weakness and vulnerability, undermining it would be counterproductive. Instead, you would want to exploit it, even encourage it. And one way you might do this, just conceivably, especially if you realize that your enemy can't grasp the notion that you consider its strengths to be weaknesses, is to find a way to convince that enemy to hold ever tighter to idealized democratic and pluralistic "principles," like a security blanket that a child believes will protect against the world's unseen evils, the monsters under the bed.
Does this mean that pluralism, diversity, understanding and tolerance should be abandoned? Absolutely not. What it does mean, though, is that we need to take off the blinders and learn to differentiate between those aspects of our democracy that make us strong and those that make us weak. We need to resist clinging to ideals as a substitute for taking action. And we need to refuse to allow our most valuable principles to be turned against us.
I'll be off for the next several hours doing income producing stuff elsewhere and probably won't have time to post again today, so
Shabbat Shalom.
