This evidence appears to show that the main cause of terrorism is the lack of civil liberties (as discussed in this blog post). So where does that leave governments whose “war on terror” involves getting rid of civil liberties?
It is not really a very difficult bit of logic. If lack of civil liberties causes terrorism, reducing civil liberties is likely to lead to more terrorism. It is fairly obvious why it happens. Lack of avenues of peaceful protest gives potential terrorists motivation and and argument for justifying the actions to themselves.
It is not only Britain and the US, that are reducing civil liberties. It is happenning all over the world, with terrorism now the universal justification, together with the argument that “everyone is doing it, so we should do”.
Countries using the terrorism excuse include:
- The US and the EU: I think everyone knows that.
- Sri Lanka: great quotes here, and under the sub-heading “anything goes” in this interview.
- China.
- Russia
- Saudi Arabi
- Uzbekistan
- India
- Georgia
- Egypt
- Pakistan
and many others. Human rights watch has an article on this spanning several countries.
Some of these are countries that already had oppressive regimes. What impact will even further denial of human rights have there? Even in a free country I believe that denying people full liberty is both wrong in itself, and will have bad effects. How much more so where oppression was already the norm.