Were my captors worse than the Guantánamo jailers?

Terry Waite writes about the way our response to terrorism is destroying ourselves.

Were my captors worse than the Guantánamo jailers?

Our leaders' shallowness and short-termism has fuelled the engine of war. We need wisdom to overcome our darker side

Terry Waite

On my first visit to Lebanon since my release as a hostage in 1991
I visited a refugee camp. I met some young people who were on a
computer-literacy course. They had made good progress. "What about your future?" I asked. "What future?" one replied. "To get a job in Lebanon is virtually impossible as jobs go first to Lebanese
citizens. We have no right of return to the place our grandfathers
came from, and how can we go abroad when we are refugees? We are
trapped."

That young man uttered the sentiments of thousands of displaced people in the Middle East and beyond. As I left the classroom I thought it remarkable that more young people did not join "terrorist" groups. The point I want to make is this: war, as well as being a blunt instrument, fails totally to deal with the root issues underlying terrorism. In the political realm it requires
statesmen and women; individuals who can think beyond the next election and who have the wisdom that comes from making an attempt
to understand cultures other than those of the west.

Western democracy has many attractive features and has brought
manifold benefits. It takes no intelligence to recognise that it
also has its dark side and that it cannot, nor necessarily ought it to be, exported to all parts of the world. If the optimistic
statements made by some British and US politicians before the Iraqi
war - when it was stated that the conflict would be concluded in weeks - were truly believed then one can only despair at the level
of understanding demonstrated.

The destructive eruption following 9/11 has struck at the roots of democratic freedom. The arguments will continue for a long time
about which particular category terrorist suspects belong to. The
fact is that on the basis of suspicion alone people have been
detained, and in some cases subjected to processes that should not
be part of a civilised nation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1648456,00.html

Democracy does indeed have a dark side. But would'nt it be far to say that so does any form of government?

*SIGH*; when one is used to idiocy I suppose one expects to find it everywhere.......

Otherwise we may just as well all give up and go home.

people like Terry Waite to ask critical questions and expose our flaws without lashing out with angry denunciations or poses of patronising denial, then we might just find our way to realising the potential of democracy. So long as we strut around imagining that what we call democratic (which it clearly is not) is the best of the best, and that the rest of the world should be grateful to have it imposed on them, we're no better than any other imperial power with delusions of exceptional licence granted by innate superiority.