Terrorism’s Wicked Paradox

By Carmen Medina

Carmen Medina is a former CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence. A 32-year veteran of the Intelligence Community, she is also the author of Rebels at Work: A Handbook for Leading Change from Within. 

Here’s the wicked paradox about terrorism. Long-term responses do nothing about short-term dangers. Short-term reactions feed extremism over the long term.

There are no quick solutions and there may be no “solution” as we think of it. This is quite distressing for Americans in particular, I think. Pick your point in history as to when this dynamic began. This is one of those classic problems in human society for which the passage of time and the change of generations offer the only hope for “solutions.”

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