Letter: Tactical errors ensure survival of terrorism

Sunday, Sept. 9, 2007 | 1:23 a.m.

Terrorism has been described by some as a kind of cancer. They suggest that - like cancerous cells - it can only be eradicated by killing every terrorist until none are left standing. I disagree, not only with the premise, but with the solution.

However, using their analogy, we have been fighting the war on cancer with the knife, radiation, and chemotherapy, and we are no closer to victory now than we were 70 years ago. Our attempts to destroy it obviously do not work - even if our doctors and pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to concede the facts. Nor have such brute force methods been any more successful in eliminating terrorism. For every one we kill, two more are ready to strap on bomb vests.

Shouldn't we, instead, be focusing our attention on the root cause of the problem? We know what causes cancer - cell mutation generated by exposure to toxins. It would seem then that a more logical, perhaps more effective approach to curing it would be to eliminate the toxins from the body, not add to them with drugs, radiation and chemotherapy.

If we view the world as a living organism, and every human being as a single cell, then the terrorists may be more accurately compared to antibodies, the body's natural defense mechanism against the real cancers - the cancers of war, poverty and injustice, created by the toxins of corporate greed and government usurpation of our freedoms.

The problem is, the weapons used by these "renegade antibodies" to fight the real cancer that inhabits our world body are no better than that used by our doctors. Their indiscriminate attacks kill more of the healthy cells than the cancerous. Thus, even if we did eliminate terrorism, the root causes of the cancer will remain. Ironically, by killing all of them - terrorists, revolutionaries, rebels and voices of dissent - we ensure its survival.

Vito Tomasino, Las Vegas