Final Project-3-News paper

Dear Editor,

                                              William Hsieh

I am a grade nine student from Kaohsiung American School in southern Taiwan. For our final Humanities class project on “making the world a better place” we are trying to get our ideas published in a newspaper like the New York Times.

            For my topic I am doing terrorism and therefore the recent death of Osama Bin Laden is giving me a lot to think about. While I agree that it was important to find him and bring him to justice for what he did to America on September, 11, 2001 and on other occasions, I disagree that his death can really do anything to stop terrorism. In the news we already hear about renewed anger across the Muslim world because of killing Bin Laden and the disrespectful way his body was dealt with by dumping it in the ocean. If we look at history we can easily learn that when a leader like Bin Laden is martyred their followers get even more passionate about their cause.

Almost for sure it will only be a matter of time until the next Bin Laden comes forth to replace him, with thousands of radicalized terrorists who were all willing to die for him before. While in the short term we might be safer since he was the spiritual leader and therefore they might feel fragmented, in the long term the West will be in more danger after Al Qaeda regroups under new leadership. Thus this game of always trying to be one step ahead of the terrorists will never end and it is only a temporary solution.

            In my opinion, the only true way to stop terrorism is to get at the root causes of the Muslim world’s hatred of the West and try to bring more understanding to both sides of this conflict. A perfect example is Pastor Jones who recently led a small group of believers to burn the Koran, which is Islam’s most holly book. Are these actions not just as radical as many of the Muslim terrorists? We should be more careful to look for radicalization and hate among us and focus on teaching tolerance to children, because if we don’t, the same cycle of hate will repeat itself forever.

We should look beyond physical security measures like airport security checks and hutting down terrorists and instead try to understand the real reasons for hate. The Untied States should rethink its Middle East policy where it has had an unwelcome and often uninvited presence for many years, often trying to bring in democracy to countries that are not politically or socially ready. This can create conditions that are a perfect breeding ground for terrorism, and Iraq is a perfect example of this.

I hope that when people are celebrating they will realize the truth that terrorism is not going anywhere just because Bin Laden is dead and will try to address hate wherever they see it before matters get out of control.