For the party of grownups and serious people, Republicans have impressive powers of oversimplification. Greg Sargent points out the most recent, flawed Republican assessment of terrorism, courtesy of Rudy Giuliani. This statement, that "The Islamic terrorist movement, the root cause of it has to do with ideology and a perversion of religion, an idea that they are intolerant of the way we live," much like "they hate our freedoms", is really not true. The ideology of Al-Qaeda, wrapped in religious language, is not fundamentally more persuasive than any other ideology. If it were, we would try to defeat Al Qaeda in peer-reviewed journals (and we'd have a good shot - we have Left Behind books).

This is the thing that Rudy doesn't seem to get - the leaders of Al-Qaeda are not representative of the entire movement. Poverty is a big component, hopelessness and lack of opportunity are also part of the picture. What Al-Qaeda offers the hopeless is respect, power and direction. There is a need, and sadly, for some people Al-Qaeda meets it.

To really defeat terrorist groups, you need to beat them in recruiting. Give their foot soldiers something better to do with their lives. A recent discussion of the IRA (maybe a repeat of this Talk of the Nation broadcast?), brought up the idea that terrorists are created one at a time, recruited by people they know and trust. We - the West, the US, the UN, our allies - need to offer potential terrorists something better than Al-Qaeda. We need to offer them something better in their countries, within their cultures. We need to support, or provide, or be, better friends, with better advice. Hopeless people need jobs, education, freedom of expression, social mobility, respect - anything that gives them some hope. We, via NGO's, foreign aid programs, etc, need to have people on the ground offering something better. Not just propaganda, but something tangible.

If someone like Rudy, whose foreign policy experienced is dwarfed by municipal government and law enforcement experience, thought about this a little more, he could draw analogies with gangs and organized crime. We don't discourage gang membership with bombs, or house to house raids, or any kind of superior force. When cities successfully prevent gang membership, they do it by providing something better, something personal and respectful to the individuals who might otherwise get caught up - hope, opportunity.

Giuliani's analogy treats Al-Qaeda like the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, but really they should be treated like the Mafia or the Crips. Maybe there's a military answer, but most people with military experience don't think so (See David Kilcullen or David Petraeus if you don't believe me). George Packer's article about Kilcullen in the New Yorker last December brought up some of the flaws in our War-on-Terror analogies. John Edwards is right to redefine the problem in his recent speeches

"Any new strategy must include new preventive measures to win the long-term struggle and fuel hope and opportunity. This includes strong and creative diplomacy, and also new efforts to lead the fight against global poverty."

This phrasing (like this post) is too wordy for easy digestion, but this is the right message. Democrats need to help people understand where terrorism comes from. We can promote policies which address the root causes of terrorism, not just the effects. Americans want to solve this problem, they don't want to live in fear, but it will take some leadership (and repetition) to redefine the terms of the debate.