INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: Why Terrorism Works is a curious book, written in the aftermath of September 11th. The author's proposal is simple, but appalling. The US should legalise torture to extract information from terrorist suspects. But Deaglán de Bréadún found the notion of meeting force with force an untenable proposition.
Why Terrorism Works. By Alan M. Dershowitz. Yale University Press, 271pp. £17.95
This is a curious book. The author is a Harvard law professor and prominent defence attorney. Like some other leading US lawyers, he attracts a lot of attention. The controversial thesis in the book, written in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, has attracted even more.
His proposal is simple but will appal many people. The US should legalise torture to extract information from terrorist suspects. A non-lethal injection under the fingernail would inflict excruciating pain on the subject, encouraging him or her to reveal what the authorities needed to know to prevent a future terrorist attack. The sole purpose would be to obtain information, and the revelations could not be used to convict the subject in a court of law.
I have read an account of Dershowitz expounding his thesis to an audience in the liberal heartland of Upper East Side Manhattan. A show of hands indicated that two-thirds of those present supported him.
The list of other books by this author includes an autobiographical work called Chutzpah. This Yiddish word is best translated as "brazen cheek, brass neck, self-promoting nerve". It is in that spirit that his proposal should be considered. He has a record of standing up for civil liberties. His change of heart and the new mood in liberal New York can doubtless be attributed to the black deeds of Mohammed Atta and his associates at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
I visited New York a fortnight after the 9/11 disaster. It hardly needs saying that people were badly shaken. There were rumours of an impending gas attack on the subways. As an island, Manhattan is especially vulnerable and, if there had been a rapid follow-through after 9/11, I am convinced there would have been a mass exodus upstate and across the river to New Jersey. Even now, fears still remain: nobody of great consequence has been charged in connection with the attacks; Osama bin Laden apparently roams free; and Americans, their complacency shattered, are having to come to terms with the fact that they are just as vulnerable as everyone else in the world.
That is the kind of moral panic that leads to daft proposals such as legalising the torture of suspects. It is understandable that Dershowitz is getting a hearing and even some significant, if hopefully short-term, support.
For all its faults and occasional tragic errors of policy and direction, in constitutional terms, the US is a model of the democratic and libertarian ideal. Practice does not always live up to principle, but the guidelines laid down by the Founding Fathers inspired the French Revolution and established the norm for aspiring democratic societies all over the world.
It would be a tragedy if this book's dehumanising proposal were given serious attention by the lawmakers. As Talleyrand said in a different context, it would be worse than a crime, it would be a blunder.
Undoubtedly 9/11 has posed a huge challenge to US and other societies. Determined zealots with limited funds and primitive equipment struck at the heart of the world superpower, and who knows when they may strike again, with even deadlier effect?
Dershowitz himself outlines the intelligence and security failures that cleared the path for the 9/11 attackers. Tighter security and more efficient intelligence-gathering are clearly needed. More than ever, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The US also needs to rethink its international role in political and economic terms and find out why so many people, especially in the Islamic world, regard it as the "Great Satan".
When so many people hate you, it is a good idea to look at the reasons and see if that hatred can be defused or deflected before these people do you further serious damage. Meeting force with force is not the only answer, nor is it always the best one, as the Northern Ireland experience proves.
Dershowitz makes a strong case for standing up to terrorists and refusing to give in to their threats, because this only stores up further trouble for the future. As a strong supporter of Israel, he has a particular antipathy towards the tactics of the Palestinians. He says his outspoken views made him the target of a terrorist plot by Arab students living close to Harvard.
The new breed of apocalyptic terrorists, immune from normal rational considerations and disdainful of any compromise short of their ultimate goal - such as the destruction of the US or Israel - will prove extremely difficult to counteract. But the pool of support around them could be drained by a more balanced approach to the Middle East conflict and a sustained effort to deal with the problem of world poverty and deprivation.
In addition, the US must not lose its lustre as, at least on paper, a fair, democratic and just society. Adopting off-the-wall proposals, such as institutionalised torture, would quickly place it on the same moral plane as the tyrannies which blot the map of today's world.
Deaglán de Bréadún's The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Ireland is published by Collins Press. He is the Foreign Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times