BEN BOVA: September 18, 2011 ... We can defeat terrorists by building up Islamic nations

We've been through the memorials dedicated to the victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The question now is where do we go from here?

Fighting scattered cells of terrorists is very different from conventional warfare. We are not facing a clearly-defined enemy, with a national territory and a recognizable army to combat.

Instead, we face small groups of fanatics, sometimes individuals, who want to harm us, who want to kill Americans.

Recognize that terrorism is the tactic of the weak against the strong. Al-Qaida and its ilk cannot hope to destroy America or conquer us. But they do believe that they might destroy Israel, if they drive us out of the Middle East and end our support for the Jewish state.

The fact is it is the terrorists themselves who are terrified. They see Western influences — primarily American influences — corrupting their Islamic societies. Ultraconservative in their religious and social outlook, they want to return the Islamic world to the Middle Ages, to religion-based tyrannies in which they are the rulers and their people meekly obey.

As the uprisings of the Arab Spring have shown, this is not what most of the people of the Middle East want. Like human beings everywhere, average Muslims want peace and prosperity, the opportunity to live as they want to, and to make life better for their children.

That is what terrifies and inflames the terrorists. That is why they want to turn back the hands of time. That is why they want to eliminate American influence in the lands of Islam.

Fighting these bands of benighted fanatics is like fighting an infestation of cockroaches. You need determination, patience and the right tools.

One of those tools is economic. Another is political. If we can show the vast majority of Muslims that adopting Western political and economic systems is the path to peace and prosperity, the terrorists will wither and die.

History gives us a bitter example.

World War I was a terrible, bloody conflict. It ended not so much in a military victory for the Allies as in an economic and moral collapse of Imperial Germany. Still, Germany did not surrender. The Germans agreed to an armistice.

But at the peace conference in Paris, the Allies imposed harshly punitive terms on Germany and sowed the seeds of World War II. In the words of one astute observer, "This is not peace. It is a truce for 20 years."

Twenty years later, Adolf Hitler's Germany kindled World War II. And Imperial Japan saw its opportunity to conquer China and Southeast Asia.

America entered the war reluctantly, pushed into the fighting by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Incidentally, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 killed more Americans than the Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941).

We defeated both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan so thoroughly that both surrendered unconditionally.

And then we won the peace.

Instead of punishing our former enemies, we helped them. We rebuilt the German and Japanese economies and helped them to establish democratic governments. Both Germany and Japan became economic powerhouses. And did not revert to militarism.

That is how to defeat the terrorists. Help to raise their standards of living. Help to establish governments that are responsive to the needs of their people, rather than tyrannies led by strong men who stay in power for decades.

This will take patience.

Don't expect Islamic societies to become American-style democracies. That takes centuries of hard political experience, and even then the system is far from perfect.

Most of the Islamic countries are not nations in the modern sense. Their boundaries were drawn arbitrarily by Western colonial powers. Within their borders are tribes that bear no allegiance to the national government.

And those national governments are often tyrannies presided over by a strong man and his family.

As Fiorello LaGuardia said, "Patience and fortitude."

We must protect ourselves against attack by terrorists. We must root them out wherever we can.

But more than that, we must help the people of the Islamic world to create societies for themselves that are peaceful and prosperous. In that way we can change the grounds that today are fertile for the growth of terrorism into lands where terrorism withers and dies.

Bova's latest futuristic novel is "Leviathans of Jupiter." His website address is

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