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This article is a summary of my unpublished essay ‘‘Democratic Development would Win the War on Terror,” previously entitled “Terrorist Triumphs are sown in the Disasters of Development”. I give evidence of the almost hysterical United States' fear of terrorism, including that from poor agricultural countries, and ask what the benefits of giving a fair price for their agricultural produce would be. It would be an important step towards the basic human security necessary for democracy through strengthening the lower and middle classes to resist oligarchic rule and corruption.
President George W. Bush spoke of "an age of terror in 2001,” and among almost innumerable pessimistic references, in 2007 said, "The war on terror we fight today is a generational struggle that will continue long after you and I have turned our duties over to others.” The United States policy-defining National Security Strategy Report identified the seedbed for terrorism with the words, "poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak States vulnerable to terrorist networks." Apprehension is sufficiently great that defensive measures taken include provision of the continent-wide ‘Africa Command,’ new US bases and permanent military forces.
US intelligence reports indicate that force, which has blown oxygen on the flames of belief and sacrifice, is failing. Terrorism thrives in undemocratic conditions. Those who have the most to gain from democracy and would support it are the peasant and the farmer. The number of these would need to be enlarged by placing the basic needs for literacy, shelter, clothing and food more within the reach of the over 1 billion peasants and farmers worldwide. An open market price for their output would support their needs. We could cease our current manipulation of the world price of agricultural produce (down to almost 50% below Adam Smith's natural price) which we achieve through agricultural subsidies and import tariffs.
More tolerance of political competition and more possibility for elites who are voted out of office to continue living adequately would follow. The benefits would enable the 66% of total aid which is presently given to non-democratic or corrupt regimes to cease, thereby giving a further boost for democracy. We could fund some compensation for the starvation deaths caused by the price manipulation in past years from these savings. We would avoid the moral damage to ourselves that results from the killing in the war which the US Administration foresees, and its associated torture, rendition and possibly cluster and plutonium bombing, landmine-laying and cross-border clandestine kidnapping. The world order we presently maintain would no longer ordain 25 000 deaths by starvation related causes daily. Our do-gooders would no longer fear the question; ‘why has no good been done’
The loss of low-cost physical resources and some political control would be offset by the lessening of the undemocratic conditions which lead to terrorism. It is not a coincidence that the most undemocratic country in the world, albeit utterly friendly to the West, and almost an honorary Western state, Saudi Arabia, supplied most of the 9/11 raiders.
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Dermot Ryan
WHY I PRESUME TO SPEAK OF “TERRORIST TRIUMPHS”
I'm uncomfortable saying this with the CIA looking in but sick of talking to myself
9/11 in New York near where I had lived was not a "terrorist triumph" but it changed me more than my graduation, my sailing championship on SF bay, my earning my second million - more than anything in my life
Until then thought this was a great world, perhaps the greatest of all possible worlds, and i enjoyed it
When i saw the plane hit i wrote to my son - "what worries me is when the empire strikes back"
I was uneasy and I started a web site "US-MUSLIM UNDERSTANDING" which failed
But during that work I learned that our world order kills more people [25000] daily by starvation than died daily in ww2. Before that i was just your ordinary ex-millionaire
I learned that we are lunatics because we deprive ourselves of peace of mind and self respect by savaging one another. We pursue happiness in the morning, kill our own kind in the afternoon, and can’t understand why we feel out of sorts in the evening.
So in my heart those who are occupied by foreign forces, those who have the price they sell their agricultural produce halved by western subsidies and those who resist legalised torture had a triumph
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