RP4Peace
10-06-2011, 09:08 AM
Yesterday, I was listening to Ken Ballen's interview in Fresh Air in NPR.
Here is the transcript of the whole interview..
hxxp:// www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=140947193
Some excerpts:
Ken Ballen, is a former federal prosecutor who spent five years trying to figure out what motivates Islamic extremists to carry out violent attacks against the United States and others they consider enemies of Islam. Ballen is founder and president of Terror-Free Tomorrow, an organization devoted to investigating the causes of extremism.
BALLEN: I think they can learn that we don't understand the world that these - the radicals come from. We don't understand their cultural milieu. We don't understand their thinking. And we need to understand their thinking to respond effectively.
You know, they are motivated by ideas and beliefs, and a completely militaristic response to someone's ideas and beliefs will not defeat them. They'll continue to even push harder for those ideas and beliefs. So I think we have to understand. And by understanding, then we can do things.
We cannot impose what we want on the rest of the world. I'll tell you something interesting in Saudi Arabia. We did a public opinion survey there that I led, and the thing - the one thing that most Saudis wanted above anything else was a free press, free elections - democracy, in other words. Yet the one policy they hated the most was the United States trying to impose its vision of democracy on them.
So the change has to come from within. It can't come from the United States.
DAVIES: And where does that leave American policy?
BALLEN: It leaves American policy at the point where when President Bush campaigned for election in 2000, he said we need a humbler foreign policy. We did not get that, but that is what we need. We need a humbler foreign policy. We need to listen. We need to dialogue. We need to hear. We need to defend ourselves when we have to defend ourselves, but we need to know what we're really fighting against and not overreach, because when we overreach, we play into the radicals' hands. That's what they want us to do.
Hmmm... I heard the similar policy from one of the 2012 republican presidential contestant... Who is that?
Here is the transcript of the whole interview..
hxxp:// www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=140947193
Some excerpts:
Ken Ballen, is a former federal prosecutor who spent five years trying to figure out what motivates Islamic extremists to carry out violent attacks against the United States and others they consider enemies of Islam. Ballen is founder and president of Terror-Free Tomorrow, an organization devoted to investigating the causes of extremism.
BALLEN: I think they can learn that we don't understand the world that these - the radicals come from. We don't understand their cultural milieu. We don't understand their thinking. And we need to understand their thinking to respond effectively.
You know, they are motivated by ideas and beliefs, and a completely militaristic response to someone's ideas and beliefs will not defeat them. They'll continue to even push harder for those ideas and beliefs. So I think we have to understand. And by understanding, then we can do things.
We cannot impose what we want on the rest of the world. I'll tell you something interesting in Saudi Arabia. We did a public opinion survey there that I led, and the thing - the one thing that most Saudis wanted above anything else was a free press, free elections - democracy, in other words. Yet the one policy they hated the most was the United States trying to impose its vision of democracy on them.
So the change has to come from within. It can't come from the United States.
DAVIES: And where does that leave American policy?
BALLEN: It leaves American policy at the point where when President Bush campaigned for election in 2000, he said we need a humbler foreign policy. We did not get that, but that is what we need. We need a humbler foreign policy. We need to listen. We need to dialogue. We need to hear. We need to defend ourselves when we have to defend ourselves, but we need to know what we're really fighting against and not overreach, because when we overreach, we play into the radicals' hands. That's what they want us to do.
Hmmm... I heard the similar policy from one of the 2012 republican presidential contestant... Who is that?