Keep calm and carry on

In World War II the British were famously respected for their stoic resolve in the face of adversity.  It is an example the rest of the world should be seeking to emulate today.  Instead, in the wake of the horrific Nov. 13 attack on Paris and the more recent San Bernadino shootings American politicians and talking heads around the globe and across the spectrum seem to be competing to see who can make the most aggressive and inflammatory pronouncements. 

The clear objective of the terror cells responsible for the Paris attack, and the many other attacks both successful and failed which preceded it and will continue to follow, is to elevate their cause to a Holy War.  They seek to be perceived as noble warriors while their actions are nihilistic crimes.  They don’t deserve that status.  Providing it to them by striking out blindly with misdirected and disproportionate rhetoric and violence has been and continues to be a mistake.  Yet the United States and its Western allies seem content to blithely assume the role of Evil Empire; enabling radical terrorists to recruit suicide jihadists by posturing as an oppressed rebel underdog. 

{mosads}The initial death toll on Sept. 11^, 2001 is reported to be 2,977 victims.  It was an outrageous crime and tragedy.  The perpetrators of that crime deserved and needed to be sought out and punished.  Defensive actions in protection against future such crimes clearly needed to be initiated.  But any rational assessment of the aftermath has to conclude that the damage of response far exceeded the initial crime. 

Reliable and comprehensive statistics are difficult to come by, but accuracy is irrelevant, because despite many obvious omissions in data the high and low ranges both clearly prove the point.  Cumulative American military casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq are officially reported to total 6,830, less than 20 percent of annual U.S. traffic deaths.  A quick online search reveals reputable western sources estimate related civilian casualties in the Middle East range between 1.0 and 1.3 million.  Muslim publications place the figure between 2.0 and 4.0 million.  The Middle East has been devastated, as from a plague.  Pick your own ratio of casualties, what has the devastation accomplished?  Does anyone seriously believe western societies are safer today than they were on Sept.10, 2001?  Does anyone believe there are fewer radicalized wanna-be jihadists today than on Sept. 10, 2001? 

Yet when the leading Democratic candidate for president, who is observably less hawkish than the Republican contingent, suggested recently that, “ISIS cannot be contained. It must be defeated,” she seemed to be doubling down on the strategy of aggressively disproportionate military intervention which the U.S. has pursued over the last fourteen years.  When the leading Republican candidate advocates a blanket ban against all Muslims entering the country, he overtly disparages, threatens and antagonizes a quarter of the world’s population. 

Ideas cannot be destroyed or eradicated by violence.  They can only be refuted and disproven by argument and example.  For fourteen years America’s example has been appalling.  We wage war by raining death from the sky, shrugging off the “collateral damage” of tens of thousands or perhaps millions of civilians by telling ourselves “if we fight them on their shores we won’t have to fight them here.”  We’re wrong.  When we fight them there, we invite them here. 

There is a very, very small population of radical terrorists in the world.  They couch their rhetoric in religious dogma, but it is not a dogma which is widely shared and the whole of Islam should not be tarred with it.  We need to defend ourselves against terrorist acts and punish the perpetrators appropriately.   But propping up dictators and raining terror from the sky in foreign lands, or invading those lands with deadly occupying forces, is a far more efficient way to stimulate the growth of terrorism than to stop its aggression. 

Keep calm and carry on.  America would be wise to drop its bellicose combative stance and focus on leading by example.  Who do we want to be?  What do we want our world to be?  When you go see Star Wars next week consider how the world views us.  Do they see us as the shining example of Camelot?   Or do they see an Evil Empire, seeking to force the rest of the world into submission? 

Hopkins is the founder and president of Kestrel Consulting LLC, a crisis management and turnaround consulting firm. He is the author of A Citizen’s 2 percent Solution: How to Repeal Investment Income Taxes, Avoid a Value-Added Tax, and Still Balance the Budget.