PRUNING THE ROOTS OF TERROR

Donald Collins

A recent spate of articles appearing in U.S. newspapers exclaim that the "Population Bomb" is only going "Pop!" They report that the rapid growth in world population seen in the 20th century has slowed, and has even reached below-replacement rates in developed countries.

I guess these columnists think anything short of all-out world war is just a "pop." How many "pops" make a bomb? Although most European nations have stopped growing, "pops" are going off in profusion in many countries world wide and are at the root of the terrorism we are now facing. Most important, I would argue, the Bush administration has consistently provided the wrong solutions to fighting terrorism.

It has long been evident from the record of the past century, when half the births were unintended, that the growth of sheer numbers of people from just over 1 billion at its outset to over 6 billion at its close was going to create huge problems. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" perfectly defines what family planning has already done and what it could do if truly made a first priority.

Being anti-family planning is basically being pro-terrorist, pro-poverty and pro-massive immigration.

The current heartbreak in the Sudan and in other countries facing famine and unrest are partly manifestations of our failure to provide choices to women and their families about when and under what circumstances to bear children. Naturally, other aspects of development and human behavior are important, but family planning is critical.

Certainly the failure of our government to address this issue by providing adequate contraceptive and other development resources precedes the Bush administration's anti-family planning record. But well over 90 percent of the expected additional 3 billion people to be added to the planet before the end of this century, will come from developing nations already struggling to feed, cloth, house and educate the people already there.

The facts speak for themselves. Of the present world population of 6.4 billion "840 million are severely malnourished, 2.8 billion (two in five) struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, 1.1 billion lack safe drinking water and 2.4 billion are without basic sanitation." How can adding more people in these categories help solve the world's problems?

Instead, we can confidently predict more Sudans, more terrorism, and more massive legal and illegal immigration from poor to rich nations.

Reasonable migration should occur, but this widespread, massive, desperate, flight from poor to rich is sad for all concerned -- and dangerous. And largely unaddressed by American leaders right now.

Many scholars have long understood these looming and dangerous limits, but no state, region, nation or ethnic group wants to say "Enough." So now, having cut the death rate in the last century, the resulting booming population has put the average age of people in developing nations at under 20.

This century will, guaranteed, be the most dangerous in world history.

The "Pop" then, is the gap between the affluent and the afflicted, a gap that's driving desperate people (many young and un-socialized) into acts of violence that are sequential and not likely to subside for at least two generations.

The predictable outcome is increasing loss of civility, civil rights and the Rule of Law (democracy?) in developed countries and the continued growth of tyranny in the less developed. And dangerous "pops" everywhere, including suicide bombers here in the U.S.

If military action is our principal solution to these terrorist threats, the 21st century will be bloodier and more dangerous than the 20th. And don't think these desperate folks will flinch at using any means including nuclear weapons.

The Bush camp is pooh-poohing "softer" answers to terrorism as appeasement --or is that "girly man" behavior? But only a concerted expansion of family planning and economic development to these less-developed nations -- lead by the U.S. -- will offer a long-term road to peace.

Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., frequently writes for several papers and journal on issues of family planning and immigration.