Dear Reader,
Welcome to this Chapter on terrorism.
Thank you for taking the time to stop by. I’ll be your guide through this Chapter.
A little bit about myself. For the past summer 2010, I was one of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice WorldLink research interns. My research focused on the topic of terrorism. .After reading, synthesizing, writing, and categorizing, I have assembled this Chapter about terrorism for you, the reader, to explore.
The Chapter is divided into categories. Each category consists of articles and resources in the form of links that I have selected, accompanied by summaries of the information and explanations. Feel free to read it through, skip around, read and come back, and/or any combination thereof.
As you begin to delve deeper and deeper into the Chapter and information, you will find again and again two amazing themes that seem to resonate throughout the research.
One, there is certainly more to terrorism than what meets the eye. The issue of terrorism is much more complicated than the ways in which the media and mainstream culture depict it. It is not at all the oversimplified, straightforward image that may come to your mind when you hear the word “terrorism”. The more that I learned about terrorism, the more I realized that black-and-white, one-sided debate, clear right and wrong are not phrases that accurately describe terrorism. Instead, it takes the readiness to learn, as well as in depth research to better understand what terrorism really is.
Two, terrorism is so much more relevant to our lives than it appears. It is not a threat in some faraway land from people we can’t relate to. Instead, it is a constant struggle present all around us, from in our own home country to just across our borders to our neighbors to the omnipresent Internet, between people who are just like us, human. Terrorism has far reaching consequences that impact all of us.
Therefore, taking time to learn about terrorism is paramount. Our ability to effectively combat it and defend ourselves suffers tremendously when we are not properly educated and informed. How are we to protect against something we don’t understand? How do we fight something we don’t know? What can we do about something we don’t fully grasp except feel helpless, hopeless, and defenseless?
It is so important to be properly educated on such global issues and affairs. As our world ceases to be many separate countries but rather one globalized society with both common and shared accomplishments and problems, we must each recognize and properly fulfill our duties as global citizens.
It is my hope and goal that this Chapter of the Reader will inspire you, interest you, and impart on you valuable information and insights and serve as an informative resource to refer back to as well as a foundation for further research into the pressing global issue that is terrorism.
Sincerely,
Ardis Zhong, La Jolla High School
WorldLink 2010 Summer Intern