sky over the Irish Sea. The bomb had been placed aboard in Vancouver and 280 of the 329 people who died were Canadian citizens. The October Crisis and the Air India bombing demonstrate that terrorism can arise from internal grievances or from grievances carried here by immigrants who feel no particular animosity towards Canada or other Canadians. Islamic fundamentalists do not have a monopoly on terrorism. And eventually, like all previous waves of terrorism, the current wave of Islamic terrorism will gradually fade away.
Most Canadians know this. Millions of us have roots in countries that have been subject to terrorist attacks. Vancouver’s Punjabi community, which bore the brunt of the Air India bombing, was already scarred by terrorism in Kashmir. Toronto’s Singhalese and Tamil communities are haunted by the continuing violence in Sri Lanka. Montreal’s Jewish and Arab communities cringe every time a bomb explodes in the Middle East. Just about every immigrant community in Canada has been marked by terrorism in some way. This sad heritage does work to Canada’s benefit in one respect: thanks to one of the highest rates of immigration in the world, this country has acquired a built-in sense of perspective and resilience concerning terrorism.
Those of us who call for cool heads are not naive. In addition to my time in Britain, I have visited Egypt and Israel during periods when both countries were subject to terrorist attacks. I taught in the United States during September 11, 2001, and its aftermath. An aunt and uncle of mine live five kilometres from the Bali nightclub where the October 2002 bombing occurred. Another of my aunts lost her boss, the CEO of the Deutsche Bank, when the Red Army Faction blew up his car outside Frankfurt, Germany, in 1989. Many other Canadians have more painful stories to tell.
Keeping calm after the Toronto arrests was made easier by the fact that the putative terrorists were amateurs. They had been tracked for two years and only acquired a (supposed) capacity to act when the police sold them bogus ammonium nitrate. Their apparent leader spoke openly about his violent intent, in one instance to a member of Parliament. The Hells Angels are much more professional and probably more dangerous.
Some commentators tried to provoke fear by focussing on reports that the conspirators had been inspired to violence by Web sites that celebrate the activities and ideology of Al-Qaeda. But why should this come as a surprise? Violence is constantly celebrated in our society—in music and movies, on TV and on countless Web sites, most of which are not Islamic. Violent acts are committed every day in our schools, streets and homes, usually by non-Muslims. Any focus on Islamic Web sites is unfair, even dangerously selective.
More recently, there have been calls for racial profiling to facilitate the detection of terrorists. At Duke Law School, my African American students called it “driving while black.” Statistically, a black man in an expensive car is more likely to have committed a crime than a white man in a similar car, mostly because of the substantial economic disparities that still exist between those groups. And so my students, who had graduated at the top of their classes in some of the United States’ best colleges and already had jobs lined up at prestigious New York and Washington law firms, were regularly pulled over and searched, sometimes at gunpoint.
Racial profiling fails on numerous counts. First, statistics are rarely applied consistently. If we wanted to be statistical about risk, we would save far more lives by prohibiting all young men from driving cars than we would save by racially profiling for terrorist suspects. Indeed, the number of roadway deaths caused by aggressive young male drivers each year greatly exceeds that which has ever been caused by terrorists. Second, racial profiling is unfair to the vast majority of people within the targeted group, who have done absolutely nothing wrong and who may—like my Duke law students—be seriously inconvenienced or even put at risk as a result of being profiled. Third, consider the negative impact that racial profiling has on the members of the group being targeted. Harassment and aggression breed resentment, not co-operation. Someone who feels harassties about a group of young men behaving suspiciously at the local mosque.
Like it or not, some small subset of people in any society will always feel aggrieved. Only a small number will seriously contemplate violence, and even fewer will actually act. Terrorism is part of a timeless phenomenon that can never be eradicated. It can only be reduced and managed. The challenge is to do so without engendering even more discontent.
After 9/11, Canada followed the United States in dramatically increasing funding for border guards, the police, and intelligence services. Those same authorities were given unprecedented powers of surveillance, detention and interrogation, with Canadians paying a significant price in terms of our civil liberties. Yes, Canada may be a safer place as a result, since it is now more likely that we will detect and apprehend any angry and amateurish young men and perhaps women who gather to plot a terrorist attack. But what are the chances of any surveillance system detecting truly professional terrorists? What airline security system can stop eight or ten physically fit young men with martial arts training from taking over a passenger plane without the use of weapons? Above all, what assurance do we have that a security-driven, war-fighting approach to terrorism will actually make the world a safer place?
As the Canadian major general Andrew Leslie said in August 2005: “Every time you kill an angry young man overseas, you’re creating fifteen more who will come after you.” A security-focussed, militarized approach is not necessarily the best way to reduce and manage terrorism. In the past, some countries have addressed the root causes of anger by adopting policies that foster inclusion and understanding, including by providing the right to vote in democratic elections along with laws and procedures that guard against the arbitrary exercise of power by the state. They have developed means of policing and intelligence gathering that are focussed and efficient, that guard against violence without provoking more of it. They have learned—sometimes through a painful process of trial and error—that terrorism succeeds only if societies and governments allow themselves to be terrorized. They have recognized that negotiating with terrorists is often a necessary prelude to a reduction in violence and, eventually, peace. The British successfully negotiated with the IRA, and Israel in the past has repeatedly secured the release of captured soldiers by, again, negotiating.
In this context, a comparison with crime is not out of place. The United States has the death penalty, a huge prison population and much higher rates of violent crime than Canada. Is a process of cause and effect operating here? When we lived in North Carolina, my wife and I were repeatedly struck by the large amounts of money that were evidently being spent on police and prisons—the county jail is the largest and most modern building in downtown Durham—instead of on good public schools and a public health care system.
Some countries have also understood that overreacting to terrorism can itself be dangerous. When we obsess about terrorism, we lose sight of other, perhaps more serious risks. For example, former U.S. vice president Al Gore maintains that climate change is a far greater global threat than terrorism. You might reasonably conclude that the terrorist threat has provided some governments, most notably the Bush administration, with a smokescreen for their failure to address this other, very dangerous phenomenon.
There is no denying that terrorism is a serious problem. But our society faces a plethora of serious and complex problems. A sense of perspective is always required, along with cool heads. Remember, the terrorists win only if we allow ourselves to be terrorized.
So take a deep breath. Exhale. Relax.
THE LAWS OF WAR
The image of a hooded man standing on a box, with electrical wires dangling from his outstretched hands, is seared into our collective memory. It scars the psyche almost as deeply as the image of two skyscrapers collapsing in Manhattan. This is partly because the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were committed by soldiers from an advanced Western democracy that long served as a beacon of hope for the world’s oppressed and abused. And it is partly because the American soldiers involved, and their superiors, should have known better: they were, after all, members of a highly professional military that has long prided itself on adhering
