There is a deep fundamental debate, usually in the arcane and rarefied world of academics and think tanks, about how to approach terrorism. Putting it in another way the debate is about which school of thought a counter–terrorist strategy should be based upon. The two schools can be termed as “terrorism as a crime” and secondly “terrorism as a war.”
Bhaskar classifies contemporary thinking on terrorism into two schools of thought, and analyses their merits and shortcomings.
Comments
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Karthik Rao Cavale
Jul 15th, 2006 at 8:05 am | #
A brilliant analysis. My only difference of opinion is this. While it must be treated as a crime, there must be no mercy after the guilt is proved. A terrorist is a permanent threat to society and deserves a death sentence even if there is no death penalty for normal crimes. And to a certain extent, circumstantial evidence must be permitted for the conviction of the accused.
Happy-Go-Lucky
Jul 16th, 2006 at 1:00 pm | #
Good analysis. But the problem with Indian(British) approach is we end up catching only one or two terrorists who actually carried out the crime. They are just small part of the larger terror network. Will catching and trying them in court and even executing them guarantee us any protection against future attacks? We need to eliminate this menace from the root. Hence I go with the american approach of treating it as a war.
I have blogged my views on this in my blog.