COMMENTARY
U.S. experience with terrorism relatively limited

By John Griffin

While Americans wait for others' terrorism shoes to drop at home or abroad, it's well to realize that many people in foreign countries have far more experience with, and still face immediate threats from, such violence.

Two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, a skeletal section of the south tower's facade remained exposed, offering a stark portrayal of the tragedy. Advertiser library photo • Sept. 25, 2001

Western experts were surprised the United States hasn't faced more terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks.

It's also a plus that our Iraq war didn't trigger more terrorist reprisals around the world, although any hope on that score was shattered by last week's bombings in Saudi Arabia.

That things are not worse seems to be because of counterterrorist arrests and actions taken by the U.S. and foreign governments against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and other terrorist networks.

But the U.S. State Department and other organizations that cited dramatic progress against al-Qaida have also warned that the danger continues. Analysts speculate that many top terrorists are lying low and that more radicals may have been created by widespread resentment over the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Some say new secret anti-American alliances may be forming to mount suicide operations, stage bombings or kidnappings, and could use biological or chemical agents, though more likely, conventional weapons.

It's too early to tell to what extent we are stopping and reversing the growth of terrorism. So we still need to realize we are not alone and profit by the experience of others.

One of my benchmarks in this process are the semi-annual gatherings here of the East-West Center's Jefferson Fellows, journalists from the Mainland and all over Asia and the Pacific. They confer, travel in each other's areas and then return to Honolulu to compare findings.

I especially remember the young Asian journalists who came here in 2001 just a few weeks after 9-11. They were full of sympathy over our loss of some 3,000 people. They were later moved by visiting ground zero in New York City.

But they also made the point that their own countries had experi-enced worse terrorism for much longer periods. One young editor from Sri Lanka, for example, pointed out that terrorism in his small island country took more than 60,000 lives in something like a dozen years.

India has seen top leaders assassinated, its parliament bombed and more than a half-dozen major terrorist outbreaks as it struggles to remain the world's largest democracy. Other stories of major terrorist acts came from Japan, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan and the Philippines.

The point was made that 9-11 had a greater impact on Americans than on many others much more accustomed to such violence. That is still the case.

This year's Jefferson Fellows include nine from Asia and five Americans (two are Asian-American journalists, which says something about increased diversity in our media). Their theme is "Local Conflict, Global Terrorism," and that, to me, makes a point about both local complexity and internationalization.

Four of the Asians spoke earlier this month at a lunch sponsored by the center's media program and the Honolulu Community-Media Council. There isn't space here to sum up that session. But here are some points from the event and from other talks and reading:

• An essential question for the United States and other countries is how to combat terrorism and remain democratic or, in many cases, just to move more toward democracy. How much should we be willing to compromise between security and the freedoms of civic society?

• Terrorism, like poverty, will always be with us to some degree. But both can and should be minimized. And yet it is not that simple. Consider this from an opinion article in the New York Times by Scott Atran, an author and research scientist:

"As logical as the poverty-breeds-terrorism argument may seem, study after study shows that suicide attackers and their supporters are rarely ignorant or impoverished." Nor are they crazed, cowardly, apathetic or asocial. If terrorist groups relied on such maladjusted people, they couldn't produce effective and reliable killers, according to Todd Stewart, a retired Air Force general who directs the Ohio State University program in international and domestic security.

Atran makes another point: "Poll after poll of the Muslim world shows opinion strongly favoring America's forms of government, personal liberty and education. ... It's our actions they don't like. ... Shows of military strength don't seem to dissuade terrorists. ... Rather, we need to show the Muslim world the side of our culture they most respect. ..."

• There's no single all-inclusive definition of terrorism, except maybe to say it employs violence and often targets civilians as well as military people.

Some international groups such as al-Qaida are clearly terrorist. But the lines can get fuzzy with domestic organizations that are sometimes bandits, kidnappers and homegrown rebels or "freedom fighters" seeking autonomy or independence for their regions. Add our own Oklahoma City bombing as another kind of domestic terrorism.

• Asian journalists, like those in other non-Western regions, often face legal repression, low pay that can lead to corruption and pressure from their military not to report problems or failures, especially in dealing with terrorism. They walk fine lines in the balance between truth, patriotism and outright repression.

American journalists usually have it much easier. Still, they can face pressures and influences. For example, most of us feel that the new Pentagon practice of allowing American and some foreign journalists to be "embedded" in U.S. military units in Iraq was a success. It showed dimensions of the war that otherwise would have been lost or long delayed.

Some foreigners, however, thought one result was to show the journalists too much "in bed with" the military and that the preoccupation of Americans with our military units gave an unbalanced picture. Arab and other foreign TV, including the British, showed more of what happened to the Iraqi people.

I don't know what the final judgment will be on everybody's war coverage, much less the real outcome in Iraq, which is far ahead.

But there, as in the related, larger and ultimately more important war on terrorism, it still seems Americans have much to learn from the experience and views of others in a world where, as Thomas Jefferson is said to have put it, "information is the currency of democracy."

John Griffin, former editor of The Advertiser's editorial pages, is a frequent contributor.