September 17, 2001
An Open Letter Regarding: International Terrorism Remediation Treaty Opportunity
To the greater world community and leadership:
This letter is an open call to experts in international policy and terrorism, and to world leaders to scrutinize, perfect, and promulgate an effective international treaty approach to terrorism.
PENTTBOM presents the opportunity and necessity to advance the world further towards tolerance and eventual peace. We should seize this opportunity to promote and establish a comprehensive multilateral treaty that commits all nations to oust the aggressive intolerance of terrorism and to accept intrusive policing from the greater worldwide community so as to eradicate and neutralize terrorism.
Please consider, comment, agree or disagree ? but share your best ideas and efforts for the benefit of mankind.
- Loss of life and the threat to the further loss of life is the ultimate wake up call for the need to be proactive and attentive, to protect our highest ideals and to be properly alert, active world citizens.
- Terrorism has awakened us somewhat ? engendering anger, wonderment and the fear of either retributions or further acts of terror. We must capitalize on this awakening, anger, wonderment, and fear to improve world relations ? safety, freedom, tolerance ? and the remediation of their opposites ? danger, oppression and intolerance, especially the aggressive intolerance of terrorism. Terrorism will be minimized when the world, collectively, has been diligent in this remediation.
- Current treaties dealing with terrorism criminalize commission or funding, but more can be done to establish strong global remedies, in order both to force the hand of those harboring terrorists and to provide a negotiation pathway towards civility.
- The United States of America and the world community will wield far greater force in warmaking or diplomacy against lurking terrorism by defining, identifying and communicating a mission promoting tolerance and the elimination of aggressive, harmful intolerance ? especially intolerance that would lead to the taking of human life. We should rally world support in execution of a treaty based on these principles, forcing objecting states into subjection by the greater power and reason of the world.
- If we kill one another, eventually few or none are left. If the question were simply that one or another must die, then a conviction to kill to survive would be sensible. But there is no such requirement. For those willing to cooperate, accommodations can be made. The only sensible killing conviction would be to kill all of those who insist on committing capital acts of aggression on ignorant premise, or who insist on engendering such acts by others.
- The malady of any world citizen ignorantly believing they can improve the world by killing another is a permeating malady: if just one adopts the malady, it has the potential to impact us all. Killing one who promotes such a malady is justifiable only if that killing does not itself promote the malady, which can only be accomplished if the mission is wisely executed to promote tolerance and eliminate harmful intolerance (4).
- We must combine force, diplomacy, compassion, and education to eradicate the ignorance and extremism that leads to terrorism.
- We must proclaim the successes of those nations of the world who have separated church from state, and who have committed themselves to tolerant diversity.
- We should show compassion for the innocent among the Afghan population (or any other populations innocently suffering from circumstances beyond their control).
- We should show our integrity by publicly acknowledging any complicity in fostering regional destabilization or moral polarization while standing against communist aggression in Afghanistan, a country whose history had already left it financially and intellectually weakened.
- We should take this opportunity to help rectify destabilizations that we helped induce (albeit, at the time, for the greater benefit of the world in our fight against Communist aggression), by working together with our former foes and the rest of the world, forcing a new model of minimal but uncompromising external governance of rogue nations enforced by the greater world community ? possibly a temporary military state ? while offering the financial and intellectual resources necessary to fulfill the objective of permitting peace-supporting - Afghan leaders to build bases of support and peaceful ideology with a minimal set of externally forced criteria, such as: separation of church and state, religious tolerance, ethnic tolerance, and with harsh penalties for infractions backed by the force of a cooperative greater world community. Such commitments would be substantial, but less than the occupation and reparation of Japan after the end of World War II. This type of collaborative effort can bring world powers together in a new cooperative battlefield for world peace fought in the theater of reason, backed by the most substantial world military powers of nations around the world who have adopted tolerant, peace loving governance. In this way, the prize will not only be maximal eradication of terrorism, but also advancement of the world through advancement of the dialog on fundamental principles for world citizenship.
- The paradox of forcefully dealing with perhaps the most powerful resident of Afghanistan (Osama bin Laden), or any other prospective co-conspirators in any prospective terrorist-harboring country, whose ethnic relatives around the world may be whipped up in response, is best solved by setting forth irrefutable principles for concurrence among each sovereign state in the world community (including terrorist-harboring or terrorist-assisting countries) calling for forceful actions against terrorism agreed to by the vast majority of world powers.
- The advancing degree of internationalization in which we live is greatly linked to advances in transportation and communication technologies that became tools of the terrorists. These same tools will be yet more powerful in the hands of a world standing untied against terrorism and other irrefutably evil principles.
- The power of the United States came from uniting individuals on a set of enlightened principles ? principles worth rallying around and fighting for when friction arose. Like it or not, humanity is ever more closely linked ? paralleling advances in communication, transportation and commerce. The next logical, and necessary, step is to advance unification of the world via mutually agreed, enlightened principles ? expanding the role of the International Criminal Court, and enlisting the collective and coordinated self- and mutual-policing powers of nations, to reign in and support the remediation of rogue nations and terrorists receiving support from or finding refuge in such nations. While we can not yet all agree on a single set of laws for all countries, we should introduce new international agreements that will appeal to all people, not just member countries of the United Nations or another intergovernmental body, as a rallying point, taking the world to a new stage of c! ollective governance as the best method to deal with extremism. Our nation is a great nation because we are united by principals against oppression, terrorism and many other evils, enabled by the rule and respect of law ? we will only live in a great world as the world progressively unites on common principals, respected and enforced by the rule of law.
- Recent events provide the opportunity to swiftly enact a worldwide peace treaty against deadly and aggressive intolerance (terrorism). The treaty may require all signatory nations to actively pursue the immediate and persistent elimination and forced abandonment of terrorist organizations, and their supporters (financial or otherwise) according to the direction of a multilateral international body or the treaty itself, according to specific objectives, such as: turning over any suspected terrorists to either the International Criminal Court or to any signatory with evidence for trial, allowing forceful multilateral international intervention in the instance of successful resistance by a terrorist organization, and the provision of economic or other penalties for nonconformance. Presumably, the only countries that would be unwilling to sign such a treaty would be those who are controlled by a terrorist or believe they are benefited by terrorism. The broadest segment of the!
world community must be enjoined to stand united against terrorism, so as to avoid permitting terrorist-induced conflict to incite any polarization among major world powers.
- Isolationism is patently impossible; multi-national policy unification in commitment against terrorism to a conditionally intrusive international legal standard is both possible and necessary.
- Individuals and nations both may also contribute by studying, understanding and promoting the principles and beliefs we hold in common ? religionist and irreligionist, politician and nonpolitician ? that promote safety, well being, and tolerance.
- Communications, media and transportation must be increasingly used as weapons in the warfare against the ignorance of extremism, aggressive intolerance, and terrorism. A new category of warfare combining modern communication tools, and instant (or near instant) international diplomacy and intelligence can and should be used in our response to this unprecedented act of terrorism.
- The fight against terrorism is ultimately not against a single terrorist organization, but against the many factors that lead to terrorist activity: ignorance, poverty, ethnic conflict, international regulations, and other environmental factors. We should demand tolerance with an ultimate objective of greater world peace, rallying the world to expeditiously enact a treaty to neutralize the forces promoting terrorism.
If we can accomplish this, then lives lost in PENTTBOM will not have been lost in vain.
Regards,
Reed Burkhart Walnut Creek, California
First Distribution:
Shahrough Akhavi Barry Balleck Louis R. Beres James Bill Bartram Brown Ted Galen Carpenter James Chalmers Steve Cimbala David Deese Ivan Eland James Fallows Robert R. Friedmann Thomas L. Friedman Dick Gephardt Michael Gunter Maurice R. Greenberg Warren R. Haffar Anne Henderson Dale Herspring Bruce W. Jentleson Dennis Jett Yahya R. Kamalipour Charles A. Kimball Lawrence Korb Anthony Lewis Roy Licklider Frederick W. Mayer Lawrence Nichols Iren Omo-Bare Jordan Paust Roger Reitman Milton Schwebel Peter Sederberg Keith L. Shimko Godfrey Sperling Thomas Trout Edward Turzanski Marvin Weinbaum Jonathan White George F. Will