The Ethics and Efficacy of the War on Terrorism: Fighting Terror without Terror? Or How to Give Peace a Chance

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Throwing a bomb is bad,
Dropping a bomb is good,
Terror, no need to add,
Depends on who’s wearing the hood.

Roger Woddis[i]

On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four passenger jets and carried out attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in the United States, demonstrating the vulnerability of powerful nations to massive attacks by small groups of violent extremists. This shocking example of “asymmetric warfare” between powerful nations and sub-national adversaries was an appropriate wake-up call for a nation seemingly inured to its vulnerability to mass political violence within its borders. But rather than waiting for a full accounting of the facts surrounding the attacks and for a debate of all reasonable responses to them, the U.S.-led coalition chose to respond to the violence with more violence–massive military retaliation framed as a “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT).

OnSeptember 11, 2016, although most Americans and virtually all global media will appropriately “remember” the tragic day fifteen years earlier, few will pause to analyze the reasons for the attacks and the “effectiveness” of the world war that has ensued. Even fewer will perform a dispassionate “cost/benefit” analysis of the GWOT, both from strategic and ethical standpoints. In contrast, I argue that the US-led counterterrorist strategy initiated by the Bush administration and largely preserved by Obama’s should be reexamined because it has been shown to be largely ineffective in reducing the global incidence and lethality of acts of political violence Western leaders brand “terrorist.”

Terrorism and Terrorists

“The term ‘terrorism’ means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.” US State Department and the CIA
18 U.S.C. § 2331 defines “international terrorism” and “domestic terrorism” for purposes of Chapter 113B of the Code, entitled “Terrorism:”
“International terrorism” means activities with the following three characteristics
1.Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
2.Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
3.Occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.” — F. B. I. Definition from the U.S. Criminal Code
—”Terrorism . . .is a social construction. . . is not given in the real world but is instead an interpretation of events and their presumed causes . . . When people and events come to be regularly described in public as terrorists and terrorism, some governmental or other entity is succeeding in a war of words in which the opponent is promoting alternative designations such as ‘martyr’ and ‘liberation struggle’.”–Austin T. Turk[ii]
Terrorismis a vexing term. Any actual or threatened attack against civilian noncombatants may be considered an act of “terrorism.”
“Terrorists” are people who typically feel unable to confront their perceived enemies directly and who accordingly use violence, or the threat of violence, against noncombatants to achieve their political aims. Placing “terrorist” in quotation marks may be jarring for many people, who consider the designation self-evident. This is done, however, not to minimize the horror of such acts but to emphasize the value of qualifying righteous indignation by recognizing that often one person’s “terrorist” is another’s “freedom fighter.” Thus, who is or is not a terrorist and what may or may not be acts of terrorism depend largely on the perspective of the person or group using these terms.
As asocial andpolitical construct,“terrorism” is an ideologically useful way of branding those who may violently oppose a particular policy or government as beyond the moral pale, and hence “not worthy” of diplomacy and negotiations, or of universal human rights protections.
When definedwithin the narrative of national security, or what is also called “Orthodox Terrorism Theory,” any actual or threatened politically motivated attack bysub-nationalagents on noncombatants, and, arguably, against soldiers, police, and political leaders as well, has been considered an act of “terrorism.” This is what I call “Terrorism from Below” (TFB), which the mainstream mass media and orthodox political discourse reflexively identify with “terrorism”per se.
However,history also gives many examples ofstate- or state-sponsored terrorism, or what I call “Terrorism from Above” (TFA), when nations, or their surrogates, have used terrifying violence in attempts to control, weaken, or eliminate rival political parties or ethnic or other sub-national groups, whether within their own borders or elsewhere. If a fair-minded understanding of terrorism is to be gained, critical examination of state- and state-sponsored terrorism must not only be limited to such notorious cases as Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein, but must also include all cases of state-sponsored terrifying violence, even when perpetrated or sponsored by Western democracies.[iii]
Whether from above or from below, perpetrators of terrifying and/or violent political attacks usually claim their actions are legitimate and “ethical” because they are “necessary” for “national self-defense,” or to promote another “greater good,” like the “Caliphate.” This is especially the case with the GWOT.

The Victims and Costs of the GWOT

Since the beginning of the GWOT, terrorist attacks have dramatically increased outside the U.S. According to the2015 Global Terrorism Indexand the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), there have been stunning recent and post-9/11 increases (up to 900% since 2000) in the global number of people who have died from terrorist attacks perpetrated by non-state actors (to about 33,000 in 2014, the highest level recorded); in the incidence of such attacks (up 80% from 2013 to 2014, to its highest-ever recorded level); in the global economic costs of “containing” terrorism (ca. $53 billion in 2014, also the highest level ever); in the number of hostages taken by non-state terrorist organizations; in the number of perpetrator fatalities, and in the number of mass-fatality (>100 non-combatant deaths) terrorist incidents (up about 400% since 9/11).[iv]
According to the2015 Global Terrorism Index, the most frequent perpetrators of TFB attacks in 2014 were the Islamic State, Al-Shabab (the first two groups accounting for more than half the global total of victims of identifiable terrorist groups), Boko Haram, and the Donetsk People’s Army; and the countries most victimized were Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria, India, Ukraine, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and the Philippines. Iraq, for example, in 2014 had the highest level of terrorism ever recorded in a single country for one year–9,929 deaths--which is more than the cumulative total of fatalities from terrorism in the entire world from 1998 to 2000.Globally, the overwhelming majority of victims of contemporary terrorism from below are Muslims; and currently (in contrast to pre-9/11), so are the majority of identifiable perpetrators.
As of the end of 2014, officially about 8,543 coalition troops had been killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S.-led Multinational Force (MNA) in Iraq, the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, and the U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF-A), also in Afghanistan, have carefully kept a running total of fatalities they have suffered: 4,804 MNA soldiers died in Iraq between March 2003 and February 2012, the date when the U.S. body counting stopped. As of the end of 2014, 3,485 ISAF and OEF soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2001. Since U.S. and other foreign military boots are only intermittently and secretly on the ground in Pakistan, mainly in the northern tribal areas, there are no body count statistics for coalition force casualties available for it.
Officially ignored are casualties–injured or killed–involving “enemy combatants” and civilians. In their joint report calledBody Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the War on Terror, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War concluded that this number is staggering, with at least 1.3 million lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone since the onset of the war following September 11, 2001. However, the report notes, this is a conservative estimate, and the total number killed in the three countries “could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely.” Furthermore, the researchers do not look at other countries targeted by U.S.-led war, including Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and beyond. Still, the report states the figure “is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs.” Importantly, this report does not include deaths among the estimated 3 million Iraqi refugees, or the millions of Syrian refugees and the estimated 300,000+ Syrian fatalities since Syria’s civil war commenced in 2011.
Furthermore, in addition to the approximately 1 million Iraqi lives lost since the 2003 U.S. invasion, an estimated 220,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, note the researchers. The findings follow a United Nations report that finds that civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2014 were at their highest levels since the global body began making reports in 2009. The researchers identified direct and indirect deaths based on UN, government, and NGO data, as well as individual studies.[v]
Accordingly, the overwhelming majority of deaths from terrorismdo not occur in the West.Excluding theSeptember 11attack, only 0.5 per cent of deaths from TFB have occurred in the West since 2000. IncludingSeptember 11, the percentage of Western terrorism victims reaches 2.6%, mostly (70%) victims of lone-wolf perpetrators (except for 9/11), with the other perpetrators being unknown or groups with more than three attackers.
Islamic fundamentalism hasnotbeen the main cause of terrorismin the Westduring the past decade or so.Eighty percent of deaths by lone-wolf terrorists in the West were driven by right-wing extremism, nationalism, antigovernment sentiment, and by political extremism and other forms of supremacy.The death toll from jihadist terrorism on American soil since theSept. 11attacks — 45 people (including the 14 victims of the attacks in San Bernardino, CA, in late 2015) — is fewer than the 48 killed in terrorist attacks motivated by white supremacist and other right-wing extremist ideologies, according to New America, a research organization in Washington, D.C.[vi]
Terrorist activity is also a significant driver of refugee activity and internal displacement. The countries that are the greatest source of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) also suffer the most deaths from terrorism, with ten of the 11 countries that had more than 500 deaths from terrorism in 2014 having the highest levels of refugees and IDPs.
Additionally, the financial costs of the GWOT have been extremely high. Official U.S. government sources (notably the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB) state that nearly $1.7 trillion has been spent, or is budgeted for, the War on Terror from 2001 through 2016. These are supplemental funds that are in addition to the base budget for the Department of Defense, plus departments that support the War on Terror (Homeland Security, theVeterans Administration, and the State Department).[vii]But according to a Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government 2013 report, the actual cost of the GWOT from 9/11 until early 2013 was approximately $6 trillion, thus accounting for roughly 20 per cent of the total amount added to the US national debt between 2001 and 2012.[viii]And the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated the GWOT cost in Iraq alone as exceeding $3 trillion as of mid-2010.[ix]
And according to the 2016 Global Peace Index, the price tag on global violence added up to $13.6 trillion in 2015, or 13.3 percent of gross world product.
On the other hand, investments in peacekeeping and peacebuilding, in contrast, totaled $15 billion.[x]

The Real Killers

In the 15 years of the war on terrorism, the number of deaths on American soil due to terrorist attacks remains at the approximately 3,000 killed on 9/11, averaging out to about 200 deaths per year. From a utilitarian perspective of seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of persons, the high costs of the war on terrorism (most notably, the approximately 8500 deaths of coalition troops, which averages to about 570 per year) are hard to justify based on 200 terrorist-caused deaths per year in the U.S., when compared to examples of four possiblypreventable causes of death that kill half a million Americans each year, but which are not afforded a level of national and global attention and resources proportionate to what have been devoted to fighting TFB.
The four categories accounting for at least 531,000 deathsannuallyin the United States are:
1. abuse and neglect causing the deaths of more than 1,740 children;
2. vehicle-related accidents, causing at least 43,000 deaths;
3. medical errors, causing a minimum of 44,000 deaths (possibly more than 100,00); and
4. the use of tobacco, causing 443,000 deaths.[xi]
And globally it is estimated that approximately 1.5 million persons will die of tuberculosis this year.[xii]
Finally, while the number of civilians victimized by TFB attacks has risen dramatically outside the U.S. since 9/11, approximatelythirteen times as many people (at least 437,000) are killed globally by homicides than die in terrorist attacks (about 33,000).[xiii]Furthermore, the costs from officially-designated terrorist attacks are lower than from other forms of violence. The economic losses from violent crime and homicide globally were 32 times greater than losses from terrorism in 2014.

The GWOT and the Politics of Fear

As tempting as it may be to view the absence of large-scale successful terrorist attacks in the United States afterSeptember 11thas evidence that the war on terror has “succeeded” (at least in part) in its primary mission to protect the United States,there is no demonstrable causal relationship between the war on terrorism and the absence of large-scale successful domestic terrorist attacks since it began–there may have been no successful major additional attacks on the U.S.even if the war had never been waged–andnonmilitary reasons, such as good police work and intelligence, may be responsible for this.
But the disproportionate focus Western government-designated terrorist attacks draw in the mass media and their effect on public fear lead to overreactions by governmental, military, and police officials, as well as by vigilantes. That fact that virtually all mainstream Western media and politicians focus on the comparatively small number of Muslim “terrorists from below” – in contrast to the much larger number of victims of state and/or state-sponsored “terrorism from above”– may contribute to the kind of anger and alienation that creates more potential for terrorist recruitment.
All wars, including the GWOT, are costly. The disheartening fact that each year brings many thousands of civilian war deaths worldwidepoints to an urgent need to reconsider the efficacy of lethal military solutions.[xiv]This applies particularly to what Pope Francis has called the “Third World War,” the GWOT.
Unfortunately, thedominant war narrativeaccepted without question in much of the advanced industrial world today acts as a filter through which the frequency and severity of recent wars and “terrorist” threats tend to be narrowly construed as evidence of this narrative’s validity. Without the influence of that narrative, past and ongoing wars might be regarded as evidence of the catastrophic failure of lethal force to save lives and resolve political conflicts. This recognition might free decision-makers to seek, and the public to demand,solutions that have demonstrated long-term efficacy in preventing, reducing, and resolving violent conflicts.
Counterterrorism Does Not Counter Terrorism
The realpolitik strategy of waging a global war cloaked as counterterrorism, put into effect in September 2001– a decade and a half ago–has not defeated radical Islamism, has resulted in, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of casualties, has led to a global clash between extremist elements within Western and Islamist civilizations, and threatens to escalate to a war of the world in which non-state terrorists and state counter-terrorists may both employ weapons of mass destruction.Consequently,it is clear that the GWOT, as a primarily military effort to defeat al-Qaeda and the Islamic State as well as their “affiliates” and “lone-wolf” emulators, and to subdue the Taliban and other insurgents, is not succeeding now and is not likely to succeed in “defeating” “Global Terrorism” in the future.

Seeking an Alternative: How Do Terrorist Groups End?

There is an alternative. To understand what might be a viable, mostly nonviolent alternative to the GWOT, it is essential to know how terrorist groups have ended.
In 2008, at the request of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, researchers for the RAND Corporation presented the results of a comprehensive study for “Defeating Terrorist Groups,” by Seth Jones and Martin Libicki.[xv]The RAND researchers examined 648 U.S.-designated terrorist groups between 1968 and 2006. They defined “a terrorist group … as a collection of individuals belonging to a non-state entity that uses terrorism to achieve its objectives. Such an entity has at least some command and control apparatus that, no matter how loose or flexible, provides an overall organizational structure.”[xvi]
Jones and Libicki provide many examples of former terrorist groups which, by cooperating with governments on collective or individual agreements, ceasefires, and peace settlements, have been more successful in achieving their political goals than through the use of force alone.Governments are much more likely to reduce terrorist violence and eliminate insurgencies by reaching political accommodations with their adversaries than by counterterrorist and counterinsurgency military and paramilitary operations.
The RAND researchers found that terrorist groupsend for two major reasons: They decide to adopt nonviolent tactics and join the political process, or local law-enforcement agencies arrest or kill key members of the group.“Military force has rarely been the primary reason that terrorist groups end, and few groups have ended by achieving victory.”[xvii]Violence, whether “from below” or “from above,”unaccompanied by dialogue, is almost always a losing strategy for all sides.
Another key finding of the RAND report was that the number of terrorist attacks attributed to al-Qaeda went up dramatically between 2002 and 2007, even after excluding from their analysis such attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. This trend has not been reversed since then, with the Islamic State, Al-Shabab, and Boko Haram replacing al-Qaeda as the principal perpetrators of Middle-Eastern and African TFB, thereby casting into further doubt the efficacy of the primarily military means used in attempting to achieve key goals of the “War on Terror.”
Social scientific data accordingly indicate thatthe incorporation of official terrorist groups in the political process combined with the efforts of police and intelligence services to prevent terrorist attacks result in a success rate (ending terrorist actions) greater than other, more militaristic strategies.So why shouldn’t thisprimarily nonviolent antiterroriststrategy replace the primarily violent, but largely unsuccessful, counterterrorist strategy of the GWOT?

Antiterrorism: A Viable Alternative to the GWOT?

Antiterrorism is an ethical and possibly effective alternative to the largely unethical and ineffective counterterrorist strategy of the GWOT.
According to Haig Khatchadourian, antiterrorism refers to:
“The administrative, police, psychological resources, tactics, equipment, security, judicial, and political measures employed by governments . . . designed to prevent terrorist attacks . . . Antiterrorist measures include the use of judicial and penal systems as a whole to bring terrorists to justice. Thus antiterrorism has both a deterrent and a punitive aspect: to deter and so to prevent terrorism, to apprehend and bring to justice suspected terrorists, and to punish convicted terrorists . . .Therefore, antiterrorist measures and strategies are, ideally speaking, nonviolent and in accord . . . with extant international law.”[xviii]

Antiterrorism and Human Security: A Global Peace-Building Alternative

to Militarism and Terrorism

Antiterrorism is only the “negative” component of a long-term process to establish human security. It must be combined with thepreventionof terrorism,both from above and from below, which requiresthe development of a global strategy of peacemaking and peace-building.
Sustainable peace and lasting conflict resolution involve the development and implementation of effective strategies and policies that de-escalate the cycles of violence, promote universal human rights and justice for all, and institutionalize effective nonviolent methods of conflict prevention and transformation. International efforts will be needed to increase “peace literacy” (understanding of these concepts and how they can be applied) in decision-makers and the general public.
One such strategy is The Global Marshall Plan, proposed by Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives and a number of members of the House of Representatives:[xix]
The Global Marshall Plan (GMP) proposes to replace US trade agreements that currently benefit the big Western multinational corporations with trade agreements that help provide financial viability for the poor and subsistence farmers and unemployed workers in the underdeveloped world, plus allocating 1-2% of the GDP of the advanced industrial countries each year for the next twenty to once and for all end (not ameliorate) global and domestic poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education and inadequate health care, while repairing the damage done to the life support system of planet earth by 150 years of environmentally irresponsible forms of industrialization by capitalist and socialist countries.
According to the GMP:
“terrorism is generated by a global system that demeans the values and the lives of many on this planet. While we in the West tell ourselves that our globalized corporate culture, our sex- and money-crazed media, and our political domination of the world are bringing enlightenment and rationality to a ‘backward’ world, many people experience it quite differently. They see the extreme individualism, materialism, and deterioration of families and religions in the West as a sickness that threatens to overpower through force or through media indoctrination the values and communities upon which they have built their own self-esteem. The demeaning of their cultures by the West coupled with the imposition of global economic arrangements that impoverish many in the economically underdeveloped world is experienced as a humiliation which threatens to destroy their own sources of meaning and higher purpose in life. This combination of poverty and humiliation drives many people into frenzies of rage and into re-interpreting their own religious or cultural traditions to emphasize the need to drive out the foreigners or the imposers of a form of secularism that threatens to engulf and destroy their last vestiges of self-esteem. The Global Marshall Plan provides an alternative which maintains a strong national defense but nevertheless reaches out to others and siphons off their rage and brings them into connection with a world of people who actually do have respect and caring for them. A strategy that provides this kind of recognition of their humanity, coupled with generous help to provide for economic well-being, is a better alternative, more likely to make us secure, than driving them mad through military, economic, political and cultural forms of humiliation….Trained, unarmed, civilian peace teams such as the NonviolentPeace force [could be deployed] to intervene in areas of conflict.Retrain thearmies of nations around the world to become experts in ecologicallysensitive construction of those aspects of their own societies that needrelief and reconstruction, including agriculture, health care, housing,infrastructure, education and computers, and other appropriatetechnology….The GMP is the most appropriate weapon for the war on terror. It replaces the failed strategies of military interventions with the Strategy of Generosity and caring for others.”
Additionally, efforts to encourage best practices in journalism and to promote and protect freedom of the press will provide essential support for nonviolent conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and peace-building policies and practices. A strong, free press dedicated to communicating vital information to the public remains one of the best safeguards against the violence of terrorism and tyranny. Finally, there should be much greater human and financial investments in working on the ground with youth, particularly with young Muslim men living in Western cultures who might be tempted to “surf for the sublime,” as the anthropologist Scott Atran calls it, in order to address their feelings of alienation and their needs for empowerment, excitement, and group camaraderie.[xx]
Instead of fighting fire with fire, of combating terror with greater terror, why not try the power of dialogue and negotiation instead of the force of arms? What do we have to lose?
 


Charles Webel is currently Professor and Dept. Chair of Peace Studies at Chapman University in Orange, CA. He previously studied and taught at Harvard and U.C. Berkeley, where he got his Ph.D. A four-time Fulbright Scholar, most recently in Myanmar, he has published 8 books and has been active in progressive peace and social justice movements since his teen-age days in New York.

 
[i]Roger Woddis, cited in C.A.J. Coady,Morality and Political Violence(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
[ii]Austin T. Turk, “Sociology of Terrorism,”Annual Review of Sociology, XXX (2004): 273.
[iii]See Charles Webel and Mark Tomass, eds.,The Global War on Terrorism: Western and Middle Eastern Perspectives(London: Routledge, 2017); Charles Webel and John Arnaldi, eds.,The Ethics and Efficacy of the Global War on Terrorism(NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Charles P. Webel,Terror, Terrorism, and the Human Condition(NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Charles P. Webel and Sofia Khaydari, “Toward a Global Ethics of Nonviolence,” inSolidarity beyond Borders: Ethics in a Globalizing World, Janusz Salamon, editor, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), 153-169; “The Global War on Terrorism: How Ethical and Effective?” with John Arnaldi,Journal of International Relations Research, Vol. 1, #1, 2012, 8-18; and Charles P. Webel,”Terror: The Neglected but Inescapable Core of Terrorism,” in The Ethics of Terrorism and Counter-terrorism,Georg Meggle, editor, (Ontos Verlag, 2004), 8393; reprinted in D. Barash, editor,Approaches to Peace, Second Edition,( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 139-44.
[iv]The 2015 Global Terrorism Index, available at:http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Global-Terrorism-Index-2015.pdf. National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), August 2015, available at:www.start.umd.edu.
[v]. See thePhysicians for Social Responsibility Report at:http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/body-count.pdf; andhttp://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/03/26/body-count-report-reveals-least-13-million-lives-lost-us-led-war-terror.
[vi].Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt, “California Attack Has U.S. Rethinking Strategy on Homegrown Terror,”The International New York Times, December 5, 2015:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/us/politics/california-attack-has-us-rethinking-strategy-on-homegrown-terror.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0.
[vii].http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/f/War_on_Terror_Facts.htm.
[viii].http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-wars-in-afghanistan-iraq-to-cost-6-trillion/5350789.
[ix]. Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes, “The True Cost of the Iraq War: $3 Trillion and Beyond,”The Washington Post, September 5, 2010:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html.
x. 2016 Global Peace Index. Available at:http://static.visionofhumanity.org/sites/default/files/GPI%202016%20Report_2.pdf.
[xi]. See, inter alia: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities” 2010:http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/fatality.cfm#children.
U. S. Census 2011, “Table 118. Deaths and Death Rates by Selected Causes: 2006 and 2007”:http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0118.pdf. U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, “Twenty Tips to Prevent Medical Errors” February 2000:http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/20tips.htm. American Cancer Society, “Cancer Facts & Figures 2010,” April 18, 2011:http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerCauses/TobaccoCancer/tobacco-related-cancer-fact-sheet.
[xii]. David G. McNeil, Jr. “Vietnam’s New Battle with Tuberculosis,”The International New York Times, March 30, 2016, 9.
[xiii]. 2015Global Terrorism Index, op. cit., 4.
[xiv]. Milton Leitenberg, “Deaths in Wars and Conflicts in the 20th Century,”Occasional Paper #29, Cornell University, 2006.
[xv]. Seth Jones and Martin C. Libicki,How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida(Rand Corporation: Santa Monica, 2008) (www.rand.org).
[xvi]Jones and Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End, 3-4
[xvii].Ibid.9.
[xviii]. Haig Khatchadourian,The Morality of Terrorism(New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 113-114.
 
[xix]The Global Marshall Plan is available at:www.tikkun.org/gmp
[xx]Tom Bartlett, “The Rode to ISIS: An unorthodox anthropologist goes face to face with ISIS.
Is the payoff worth the peril?”The Chronicle of Higher Education,May 20, 2016.

One thought on “The Ethics and Efficacy of the War on Terrorism: Fighting Terror without Terror? Or How to Give Peace a Chance

  1. “The Global Marshall Plan (GMP) proposes to replace US trade agreements that currently benefit the big Western multinational corporations with trade agreements that help provide financial viability for the poor and subsistence farmers and unemployed workers in the underdeveloped world, plus allocating 1-2% of the GDP of the advanced industrial countries each year for the next twenty to once and for all end (not ameliorate) global and domestic poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education and inadequate health care, while repairing the damage done to the life support system of planet earth by 150 years of environmentally irresponsible forms of industrialization by capitalist and socialist countries”
    There is a world swimming in cash, I mean swimming. They have jaguars and BMW’s every were, indoor ski slopes nd the highest office buildings n the world. They huddle around the Persian Gulf.. I’m sure that they can contribute to the Global Marshal Plan

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