So what is the solution? If we spend all our time arguing what the solution isn't, we leave a big vacuum which is then filled with even more garbage ideas.
The solution is to go on with your life. You cannot stop terrorism, but you can take out it's sting. We seem to have forgotten the lessons about the IRA, et al.
In addition, when people say "solutions" what they mean is "something that doesn't inconvenience me or require me to do anything".
However if you want "real" solutions, here are some:
1) Start denouncing ALL religion as the force for stupidity that it actually is. "I believe in an imaginary sky being with no evidence and you can't convince me otherwise" should be LAUGHED AT as the absurdity it is.
2) Get everybody off of petroleum so that there isn't any money for people to fight about over in the middle east.
3) Quit supporting dictators and bombing countries for geopolitical reasons.
4) Start fixing double digit unemployment rates instead of making them worse with "free trade" agreements that only allow companies to use open borders while preventing workers from doing the same.
5) Make mental health care a much bigger priority than it currently is.
Unfortunately, these solutions don't feed into people's preconceived biases and xenophobia and don't put more money into rich people's pockets. So they are all non-starters.
Hmm, I think your first two points are a bit harsh and don't cover the whole picture.
1) Religion is not really the problem. There are a over a billion muslims in the world, and a little more than that who are Christians. The percentage of each that are involved in violence, even major wars, is so small to be statistically insignificant (definitely less than 1% or even 0.1% (or even 0.00001% if you just consider terrorists)). When religion does come into play its typically in a more ethnocentric way - e.g. religion-as-race.
2) most of the current problems, including those coming out of iraq, were not due to 'petroleum', but rather internal rebellions and foreign interference that is probably more political/ideological than financial in nature. A certain mindset might attribute a lot of the problems in the middle east to politicians a decade earlier seeking to win elections by looking tough on dictators, but not having the willpower to deal with the aftermath of their intervention.
The other points are good, though blaming 'freetrade' as the cause for unemployment and/or other financial troubles is probably a bit simplistic.
Most religions promote "us vs them" attitudes that make people think that anything can be done to the "them". The religions in the US also give birth to our "domestic terrorists" but they don't get called that because 1) they are white and 2) "Well, they just kill baby killers, fags, etc. so they kinda deserve it."
I don't see calls to deport Baptists, thank you very much.
Religion needs to finally get terminated. Period.
> but rather internal rebellions and foreign interference that is probably more political/ideological than financial in nature.
Nobody would care about most of those dictators if there wasn't enough money involved to make them important. See: Africa. Nobody really cares one iota about genocide or terrorism in Africa as it has no importance.
> though blaming 'freetrade' as the cause for unemployment and/or other financial troubles is probably a bit simplistic.
The issue isn't "freetrade" per se. It's the fact that the corporations get to be transnational while the workers don't get to cross national borders anywhere near as easily. So, the corporations get the benefits while the workers get shafted.
I think you will find most states promote an 'us vs. them' attitude, especially in times of hardship. And conversely that both states and religions promote harmony and communion during times of plenty.
I'd argue for example that Christianity is only peaceful these days because the states that are predominantly Christian are also the most prosperous. And, if you want an example of what atheists do during times of hardship, look to soviet Russia or even Nazi Germany.
As for why middle eastern dictators matter more than African dictators to the west (basically the US), it's possibly because, on the international stage, your partially right: the middle east was initially interfered with because of its oil, but also because of its proximity to Russia. And today's conflicts are not about those reasons but the legacy of those reasons, I would say.
I wasn't arguing that it was their atheism that they committed atrocities in the name of - rather that you don't need religion to commit atrocities. That article and, I think, your position are pursuing the same fallacy but in the opposite direction.
Hitler had his ideology, Stalin his manifestos etc - they all had their own, unique 'holy book' or similar that justified their crimes and it would be a mistake as you've said to somehow link them all as being from a common position.
And yet Hitchens and possibly you do the same thing in the opposite direction: despite the average ISIS member having as much in common as your, say, average US muslim as a nazi might have to a 1917-era russian communist (next to nothing) - you are arguing that their religion, not their idealogy is at fault.
You might argue that the various holy books of faiths cause a problem: for as much as the bible and the (far better written) quran espouse love and joy etc etc they both also include a fair amount of violence. But these books have been rewritten, multiple times, and are constantly being reinterpreted. Blaming the text for the actions of the reader seems harsh.
I guess ultimately the problem I have is that people who say religion is the problem and it should be banned seem to me to be worryingly similar to those that said computer games should be banned in the 90s. A very small amount of people committed atrocities, and all of a sudden it was the games 'promoting violence and hatred' that needed to be stopped, rather than people confronting the more nebulous and difficult issue of culture surrounding the criminals that made them more susceptible to hate and sociopathy.
> There's nothing about being an atheist that promotes hatred. There isn't a holy text for Atheism that tells people to believe or do things.
On the other hand, there is nothing in atheism that can possibly say that anything is wrong. If the material universe is all that exists, humans are fundamentally no different from mosquitos or rocks. Killing a handicapped person because they inconvenience you cannot be seen as essentially worse than burning a leaf. In short, atheism provides no reason to do or not do anything other than "because I want to".
By contrast, if someone claiming to be a Christian wants to commit murder, they can only do so in opposition to the explicit commands and teachings of Jesus and of the moral laws they claim to believe.
By no means does this imply that "Christians" will always behave better than atheists. But at least there is ground for defining what it means to behave "better" and to argue for such behavior.
Nazi Germany was Christian, very much so (There were also fringe pagan elements, yes). Atheists were persecuted under Hitler. Soviet Russia didn't kill anyone in the name of atheism. Atheism isn't an ideology, only the lack of a certain kind of ideology. There isn't much that unites atheists. It doesn't mean atheists don't subscribe to any ideologies, of course. In the case of Soviet Russia, the ideology responsible for the atrocities commited would be communism. Of course, these ideologies are not the sole reason people turn into savages. But Nazi Germany and Christianity for example were compatible because they shared a lot of hatred against jews. Christianity made a lot more people susceptible to Nazi propaganda (together with economic problems) than would have been possible.
That is right, but I suspect, that if it weren't for religion, people would find another narrative, to create a "us vs them" attitude. Nationalism is an example that comes without religion, racism is another, and I suspect a plentitude of isms, that can be used for that.
I think, religion is mereley a vector for marginalization, not the problem in itself.
May be there should be a constitutional requirement to put those politicians that call for war right in the front lines along with those who actually fights it. Then may be they would have an appreciation for veterans and their care, cut back on unnecessary wars as they would think hard before putting themselves in harms way rather than war mongering sitting in the luxurious comfort.
Taking responsibility can put an end to a lot of bad things happening in todays society. Doing whatever without having to face its consequences is the root cause of such behavior that causes harm to people.
There's a lot of room for innovation here, and there hasn't been much precedent for this historically.
You could have constitutional measures controlling the way that wars were funded. A simple example: simple outlaw any kind of deficit spending by the national government. Another: a mechanism by which the release of funds could be tied up under legislation supervised by a third party such as the judiciary. [You could have a war chest, but encode it in a law such that the money could only be released if a senior court ruled that the release satisfied self-defense criteria.]
One of the reasons that the original United States constitution (Articles of Confederation) was replaced by the current one was related to military funding. In the old system, it was difficult to raise an army for shared purpose (e.g. fighting the revolutionary war) and there was potential for states to go to war with one another. The issues raised by that period will be familiar to anyone following European integration projects. Some hard-line libertarians in the US remember the Articles of Confederation fondly, because of the limits it imposed on government power.
The solution is accepting that the potential for crime, even mass murder, is a necessity for a free society, and that it's better for some terrorists to succeed than for everyone to live under a government that sees all, knows all, hears all and cannot possibly be risen up against. The greater threat to life and liberty always comes from a government's response to terrorism, not from any act of terrorism itself.
Treat terrorism as just another crime, nothing special, nothing existentially critical. Nothing to fight a war against the entire world over. Governments already have the tools they need to fight terrorists without limiting encryption, they simply choose not to use the tools they have, because they would rather use terrorism as a pretext for grabbing power.
On your first paragraph, that sounds like the absurdist end of the libertarian spectrum and I'd expect more moderately minded people would take some issue with that line of thinking ...
With regards to "Treat terrorism as just another crime, nothing special," I feel that the problem with terrorism, as it is called is the fact that it is coordinated and targeted. It is more like "organised crime" but it has the specific goal literally of creating terror, whereas the interests of organised crime are purely commercial and if you don't get in their way they won't get in yours.
The issue is with people going around creating terror in a coordinated way, which undermines the authority of the state, and many people's feeling of safety.
Of course that still leaves the question of how do you respond to it, but simply "accepting that the potential for crime, even mass murder, is a necessity for a free society" is similar to me to accepting that a waterfall software development model is a natural emergent phenomenon, inevitable and should thus be embraced. It's a mode of thought that never has a happy ending.
Just to yank myself back on topic again, terrorism is thought to be similar to a child who wants his way and keeps escalating negative attention seeking tactics to the point where you either acquiesce (thus reinforcing the negative behaviour), or you smack the child (at best only a temporary solution, that could lead to further escalations if not sooner, then later in life - could even put you in front of a judge).
"Smacking the child" is what the west has been trying so far.
My personal opinion is that there is no universal generalised "third option", though intricate behavioural theories abound. I would take the opinion that every child is an individual and must be dealt with, and respected as such. It may be as simple as giving them something else to occupy themselves.
>that sounds like the absurdist end of the libertarian spectrum and I'd expect more moderately minded people would take some issue with that line of thinking ...
Should people have the right to communicate with one another without government interference? Does encryption undermine the state in a similar way as terrorism, or is it merely an extension of the existing right of people to be (to quote the US Constitution) "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects from unreasonable search and seizure" ?
I concede that reasonable people can disagree with where the line should be drawn (given different states and different philosophies about the proper nature of government) but I don't think it's that absurd to insist there should be limits on what any government can know about its citizens.
Unfortunately, there have been too many demonstrated cases of governments abusing the legal limits given to them, so I have no reason to expect that greater surveillance powers would be used responsibly. When it comes to weakening encryption, they're not "smacking the child," they're smacking every child and hoping they'll hit the right one sooner or later.
This may be a controversial opinion, but I do believe that a certain amount of surveillance is effective. It worked in London. It worked in New York.
But that is "using" technology. Not "crippling" it. I am sympathetic to the needs of the state, and I believe there should be some attempt to meet these needs, but with oversight, and with proper procedures and protections.
It's one thing to say James Bond doesn't have time to call back to 'M' to get permission to plant a bug but James isn't a massively industrialised automated spying operation. I'd give him sole dispensation on national security grounds but that doesn't scale up to the level that GCHQ and NSA were doing. The more actors involved the greater the possibilities for systematic abuse and that has to be acknowledged, and those questions answered.
I don't think it's controversial - one of the reasons people oppose domestic surveillance is because it's effective, if it weren't effective, its abuse wouldn't really be a problem.
But law enforcement already has ways of doing its job without getting new surveillance powers. They can find people on Tor, they can pay for exploits to get into cellphones, and there always seems to be obvious (in hindsight) dots that could or should have been connected, leading to a terrorist plot, which rarely seem to involve encrypted communications.
I want terrorists stopped, but i'm not convinced that governments can't stop terrorists even with the existence of encryption.
Just on my final point, for anybody who wants to look at how terrorism has been "resolved" in the past, I highly recommend researching "The Good Friday Agreement" which was hugely successful in Northern Ireland. It involved a large amount of compromise on both sides, and the consumption of a whole heap of humble pie.
Why do you think that there is a solution? IMHO it's a mistake to think that there are solutions to everything. Sometimes, not doing anything is the best we can do.
In addition, when people say "solutions" what they mean is "something that doesn't inconvenience me or require me to do anything".
However if you want "real" solutions, here are some:
1) Start denouncing ALL religion as the force for stupidity that it actually is. "I believe in an imaginary sky being with no evidence and you can't convince me otherwise" should be LAUGHED AT as the absurdity it is.
2) Get everybody off of petroleum so that there isn't any money for people to fight about over in the middle east.
3) Quit supporting dictators and bombing countries for geopolitical reasons.
4) Start fixing double digit unemployment rates instead of making them worse with "free trade" agreements that only allow companies to use open borders while preventing workers from doing the same.
5) Make mental health care a much bigger priority than it currently is.
Unfortunately, these solutions don't feed into people's preconceived biases and xenophobia and don't put more money into rich people's pockets. So they are all non-starters.