www.williamandmary.com/news/?id=5421 -
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Published on: 12/8/2005
Last Visited: 6/14/2006
Downing and Kuiper first enlisted Mike Hurley, a former CIA career officer and director of the counterterrorism policy investigation for the 9/11 Commission.
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Holding a well-worn copy of the famed 9/11 Commission report during his talk at the College, Hurley told students that the document should be required reading for every adult American and should be taught in every professional school, university, college and high school.
In their attacks on the United States, terrorists ,exploited deep institutional failings in our government,, Hurley said.The commission concluded that the attacks ,were a shock, but they should not have been a surprise., The United States had been given clear warning that Islamic terrorists intended to kill Americans, Hurley said.
,It was a failure of imagination.Leaders didn,t understand the gravity of the threat that faced us,, he said.
Now keenly aware of that threat, Americans must work toward not only a defense but also a solution to the base issues that promote terrorism.But Hurley, too, who was lead coordinator in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda, knew what Downing and Kuiper discovered in that Israeli prison: Some terrorists are beyond help.
,I,ve called in airstrikes on a determined enemy.I don,t think that you can reason with fanatics who commit mass murder,, Hurley said. ,There is no military solution to terrorism.Use of the military is necessary and will answer part of the problem, but there is so much more that can,t be resolved from the use of force,, he said.Hurley said that a world of 6 billion people, in which more than half earn less than $2 a day, is ,dangerous, and ,destabilizing.,
,Terrorism isn,t caused by poverty, but when people lose hope, when societies break down, when countries fragment, the breeding grounds for terrorism are created,, he said.
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Hurley urged students to get involved in the fight by educating themselves, not simply through books and news accounts but also through experience, curiosity and inquisitiveness.The goal, he said, is to ,change the hearts of those who have given themselves over to hate and intolerance.,