“Terrorist Triumphs are sewn in the Disasters of Development”
[ A way to Win the War on Terror by Democratic Development.]
I refer to the almost hysterical United States fear of terrorism including from the poor agricultural countries and ask would the benefits of giving a fair price for their agricultural produce be an important step towards the basic human security necessary for democracy through strengthening the lower and middle classes resistance to oligarchic rule and corruption.
President George W. Bush spoke of "an age of terror in 2001” [1] 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.”[2] The United States policy defining National Security Strategy Report[3] identified a seedbed for terrorism with the words, "poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak States vulnerable to terrorist networks." US aapprehension is sufficiently great that defensive measures taken include provision of continent-wide ‘Africa Command’ new US bases and permanent military forces. US intelligence reports now indicate that force, which has blown oxygen on the flames of belief and sacrifice, is failing.
Rather than making many unelected elites permanent by military support from the huge war on terror budget we should recognise that terrorism thrives in undemocratic conditions. The history of our own democracy demands we permit those who have most to gain from democracy and would support it, the billion plus peasants and farmers, an open market price for their output. the basic needs for literacy, shelter, clothing and food to be more available to the number would be enlarged. would support their needs. We could cease our 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 open the possibility that the 66% of total aid which is presently given to non democratic or corrupt regimes be ceased thereby giving a further boost for democracy. We might fund some compensation for the starvation deaths caused by the price manipulation in past years from this saving.
We would avoid the moral damage to ourselves of 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 might no longer ordain 25000 deaths by starvation related causes daily. Our do gooders would no longer fear the aggregate 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. Not by coincidence, the most undemocratic country in the world, albeit utterly friendly, almost an honorary Western state, Saudi Arabia, supplied most of the 9/11 raiders
