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Today I asked myself a philosophical question, why wage war? After about twenty minutes of pondering this question I came up with this answer: to reduce or remove power and influence of those whom you are waging war against. Power is what can be used to force its will on its opponent and even its own people. Influence is what draws people to its cause.
Now to use this definition in a comparison of defeating the Nazis in Germany and taking on terrorism. In a very basic sense all power and influence is derived from people, thus if you kill everyone who has power or influence then you will achieve your goal. However is this truly a viable option?
Let us think back to World War II, did we kill or punish every single Nazi to end Nazism? No, we removed the source of power it had by defeating (NOT destroying) it’s military. Without its military the Nazi government could not exist, as it was a government controlled by an ever increasing minority that forced it’s will on the people. However that solved only part of the problem, we now had to deal with what influenced the Germans to become Nazis in the first place.
In a very general sense what cause many people to become Nazism was the economic situation in Germany following World War I which was primarily brought upon the Germans by the international community as punishment. So what did the Nazis offer and provide them with? Economic security, a place to eat and sleep. This is where the influence lied for the Nazis. When they were defeated they no longer could provide the people with that, often leaving the people in a worse situation then when they first became Nazis. Thus the Nazis influence was gone. So you did not have many underground Nazi fighters, as a majority of them were provided with economic security by the Allies following military defeat.
There you have the reason why the Nazis were defeated; we removed both their power and influence.
Now, what about terrorism? What is there source of power? I would argue with you that terrorists have very little power to enforce its will on people. It simply cannot in any significant manner, as the Nazis did, require people to participate in its military operations and create concentration camps for all those of their own people who did not go along with their will.
The ability for the terrorists to create death and destruction is dwarfed in comparison to that of the Nazis. This is not to say it is not significant, but we still have yet to solve the reason behind crime so there will always be people who are willing to kill others for whatever cause it may be. Almost any small group of people could have orchestrated an attack similar to that on 9/11. So I will argue that the terrorists do not, and never had, any actual power, which leaves them only with influence.
You can have influence without power however you cannot have power without influence. Thus if we continue to let the influence of terrorists grow they will eventually have enough power to cause multiple catastrophic events. So we need to remove the influence that terrorism has over people. So we need to know, what causes people to become a terrorist?
The influence that terrorist organizations have over its members is the promise of a society that reflects their cultural values and opinions. However how does that make the west its enemy? Well the problem has occurred where the west has gone into their sovereign land, denounced their values and forced their own upon the people. For example we do not believe women should be forced to cover their faces and that not doing so is punishable by death, however they do. Some would rather die than give up these values. Thus when the west goes to these places and forces them to adopt values they find contradictory to their own they are willing to die to get them back.
Take the American Civil War for example. The people of the south felt so strongly about having the ability to enslave another person that they were willing to die for that cultural value. They were even willing to fight against those who were very culturally similar to them for this right.
To remove the influence that terrorist groups have to draw people to their cause is to show we respect their values and sovereignty. We don’t have to agree with their values. However we should fight problems that are common to all humans, such as sickness and poverty. We have a much greater chance of influencing their values as a friend than an enemy.
