Terrorists' Own Words Can Help Us Stop Them

The 9/11 commission's findings about the government's failings in the period leading up to the attacks have been dismaying. But today we are in the middle of war, and apportioning blame for those failures will not help us win.

More troubling is that we are continuing to swat at yesterday's threats with yesterday's tools and, in the process, aiding the terrorists' cause. If the United States continues to prosecute a war on terrorism without thinking about what motivates new recruits, we, as a country, will lose.

We are in a race with radical clerics who are using our actions to help mobilize new terrorists. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked in a memo in October 2003, "Are we capturing, killing, deterring or dissuading more terrorists every day than those clerics are deploying against us?"

The answer appears to be no.

Al-Qaeda on the move

The bestial beheadings of American Paul Johnson Jr. in Saudi Arabia last week and South Korean hostage Kim Sun Il in Iraq on Tuesday are just the latest indications that the misanthropic movement inspired by al-Qaeda is continuing to spread its vicious ideology.

Data compiled by Rand show that nearly twice as many acts of terrorism were carried out in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001, (4,422) than in the two preceding years (2,303). The number of people killed per attack has also gone up, from an average of 0.65 deaths per incident to an average of 1.

Vice President Cheney's boasting, in response to Johnson's killing, that "America will hunt down the killers, one by one, and destroy them," illustrates the problem with our government's approach. It presumes a finite number of killers. We need to address the appeal of al-Qaeda's hateful ideas because the movement continues to attract nihilist minions more quickly than we can stop today's killers.

For the past six years, I have interviewed religious terrorists around the world. Their grievances vary. The size and capacity of these groups to commit violent acts vary, too. But they all claimed that because their cause is just and because they believe God is on their side, any action, no matter how heinous, is justified. And almost every terrorist I interviewed said he felt humiliated by a person or entity, and that through terrorism, he hoped to recover his dignity.

The false idea that the United States is engaged in a crusade against the Islamic world is a critical component of the Islamist nihilists' worldview, and spreading this idea is crucial to their success. It is in this context that the decisions by senior officials to allow illegal "pressure" during interrogation, and the heart-wounding images of American soldiers humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners, become so important.

Errors of our ways

We have made two fundamental errors. The first is imagining that the enemies can be beaten back, largely unilaterally, with Cold War tools. The second is more complex. Talking to terrorists has taught me this: When we become moral swaggerers, when we are so certain that God is on our side that we believe ourselves to be beyond the reach of normal moral inquiry or law, we make ourselves vulnerable to the basest aspects of our nature. In often assuming itself to be above the law, but especially in regard to detaining and interrogating supposed terrorists, the Bush administration has made a serious moral error -- one not that different from the error made by the terrorists themselves. And it has made us more vulnerable to terrorism.

To win this war, we need to understand that we are fighting an idea, not a state. Military action -- minimally visible and carefully planned and implemented -- may be necessary to win today's battles. But the tools required in the long run to win the war are neither bombs nor torture chambers.

We need a Manhattan Project-type effort -- involving the best and the brightest from all over the world -- to develop an effective strategy. The weapons required to win this war include tools for promoting dignity: schools, hospitals and health care for women, respect for human rights and an understanding that the law applies to everyone -- including those who believe that God is on their side.

Jessica Stern,author of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, is a lecturer atHarvardUniversity'sKennedySchoolof Government.