Persuasion is not just about talking to people. It's also about getting people to listen to you in the first place. The war part of the war on terror is the battle against not even being *able* to communicate: the brick wall of unlistening that Islamists have around their core values. That this is not the same thing as theism is evidenced by the fact that Jews, Christians and Hindus are not instigating horrors upon either each other or the secular values of the West. Attacking theism as a way of attacking terrorism is like banning guns to stop violent crime: not the point, won't work.

But I do agree with Gil's distinction between ideas and actions. The ability to discuss one's ideas is predicated on the idea that not all ideas do actually necessitate certain kinds of unthinking immediate action: and that is why I personally would characterise the evil out there, whatever one wants to call it, not by its wrong-thinking but by its *lack* of thinking. It is not flawed ideas that are the problem, but the failure of flawed ideas to grow by coming into contact with other ideas (criticism and improvement).

Not everyone who believes conspiracy theories therefore decides to strap explosives on their body and go and murder schoolchildren. This is a huge and fundamental difference between New Yorkers and Chechen "rebels". Western liberals may be mistaken in implicitly supporting the bad guys, but they are not the *cause* of the war: in order to end terrorism, we have primarily to attack not the conscious ideas of liberals or Islamists, but the unconscious culture of non-growth that prevails in the Islamic world. This is a deeper thing than the higher-level conspiracy theories it includes about the way the rest of the world works.

If you argue with A Western liberal for long enough, well enough, then eventually you may cause some improvement in his world view. But this is not going to happen between you and a terrorist hell bent on beseiging a school. To persuade the people at the bottom of the trouble (not exactly the same thing as the "root cause", but not dissimilar- more like the most active enactors of the theories, or the leading troublemakers) you have to get *those* people (and all potential would-bes) to listen.

This is done by force, and force is very different from persuasion. Democracy is not, in itself, growth or better ideas than Islamism- it can, potentially, allow for all kinds of ideas, including tyranny. But it doesn't generally, because democracy *allows for* the growth of ideas within its debate-based traditions, and this tends to happen quickly as soon as it is set in process.

The idea that everything human beings do, including war and political systems, is theoretical, is, I think wrong: there is a real material world out there, and we do interact with it, whether or not our theories recognise that fact. Therefore, the war is fundamentally not against any theoretical idea: it is a war against destructive *activity*, born of lack of growth protected by other destructive activity. As terror is an active verb, I think it is not a bad name for this. Islamism, which is the enactment of certain Islamic religious ideas in a certain way, embodies both belief and action in its meaning, and is, I think, also appropriate.

In other words, actions are more fundamental than theories. This is why we fight this war instead of being pacifists: you can't persuade anyone of anything once you've had your head sawn off.

Alice