This post briefly discusses the two major approaches to addressing terrorism, the “hard” and “soft” approaches.
“We could do this the easy way or the hard way,” said the CIA officer, preparing the standard operating kit for waterboarding.
If you’re a fan of the 24 TV-series or Zero Dark Thirty and the many other terrorism-related movies out there, you’d pretty much have a glimpse of how the United States handles terrorism: showing the terrorists who’s boss. The Bush administration was notorious for launching the War on Terror, a move which did kill Osama Bin Laden, but gave us ISIS with a vengeance and a century’s worth of problems in the Middle East.
Despite some of the successes of the War on Terror, it has often been criticised as being “counter-terrorist” rather than “counter-terrorism”. The former suggests a focused obsession on killing terrorists as opposed to addressing the larger, structural issues that gave rise to the “illness” in the first place. Thus, in the recent years, we’ve seen a “softer” approach to counter-terrorism. As opposed to invading Iraq and ordering drone strikes, the soft approach attempts to address terrorism as an issue that stems from extremist ideology. What needs to be attacked is the ideology, rather than the terrorists themselves.
Both approaches have their own merits and shortcomings, and that’s what I attempt to briefly discuss.
Continue reading “Le’ Notes #30: The hard and soft of counter-terrorism efforts”