The only way to fight the terrorists is to rob them of their assets. Their primary asset right now is the indefensible actions of our governments.There is more than one way to fight terrorism and its practioners, but robbing them of their moral cause and the higher reasons why they fight is one that hardly gets the attention it deserves.
Part of the problem is the presence of so much irrationality permeating terrorist philosophy. Often enough, the "argument" they are so violently making doesn't make sense. Their followers (the relatively peaceful base of direct physical support that advocates terrorist end goals) may not even be receptive of reasoned opposition. How can you convince and change the minds of terrorists and their enablers when they might not be open to it? If you are perceived to be the Great Satan, part of the corpus of prime evil, an infidel (or worse, an atheist!), who by merely existing is a target...why listen to you?
On the other foot, the broader network of support or sympathy is more likely to be swayed by argument. Allow my inner optimist a few minutes to talk here. They might observe the actions of government: the military invasions, the rights-restrictions, the double standards and lying, the willful blind eye turned towards vicious regimes in order to secure their support, the creeping grasp of prisoner torture and abuse, the mounting body count of civilian deaths in the line of fire, the stationing of "infidel" troops on property held to be sacred, etc. These people, seeing the harm caused by agents of the US and its allied nations, can conclude that the rebels/insurgents/terrorists have a legitimate point even if their chosen method to make that point reality is the deliberate murder of civilians and destruction of property not involved in the grievances in question. They see a complaint that has basis in reality.
If you can demonstrate that the enemy of the terrorists is not guilty of the abuses they allege, you've taken the first step towards victory by alienating them from the greater support they need to succeed. Again, terrorist goals and ideology is frequently batshit insane and against people that believe such garbage one cannot successfully argue. These are the worshippers of violence and our safety can only be secured with violence against them in return. However, these people have always been the problem. Even if Israel was pushed into the ocean, every American withdrew into the US, and we quite literally left the Arab world and other Muslims alone, there is no doubt in my mind terrorism would still occur.
But on a significantly smaller scale.
There are other assets terrorists have, but if you assume they are trying to sway populations into accepting their demands or changing political policy (some rational goal), you can fight terrorism indirectly by merely watching them rhetorically swing at empty air, reduced to just another deluded group of ranting nutjobs whom civilized people accept as the background static of any human reality. If they are using as ammunition the criminal actions of governments (and the scope of that category can be quite large indeed), then denying them that resource ought to be a priority.
Feel free to dismiss this as the uninformed blather of a twentysomething American with hardly any terrorism experience or knowledge. But this is an unmanned front against terrorism and it's long past the time to take it seriously. Military deployments cannot solve all or even most of the terrorist-related problems on this plant because a nontrivial percent of terrorist-related problems are caused by war.
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Terrorism exists not because people in the Arab world are jealous of us, they hate our freedoms or they want to break our society. Terrorism exists because of the actions of the US, UK, and major European countries oppression of the Arab world. It is our governments imperialistic ways, the way they feel they have the right to use force to implement regimes that are ultimately controlled by them in the name of democracy. We are witnessing a new empire being formed in the middle east, where the united states controls assets, people, governments and in the process to achieving such ends, thousands of people are being killed.
Is it any wonder then that the vast majority of the Arab world detests us? Is it any wonder that we are hated by the rest of the world because in some sick way we feel we're better than them, and that our ways are right and there's wrong? We invade and occupy who we want when we want, and hypocritically support evil regimes at the same time (Israel). All this hatred is feeding these terrorist organisations with the motives, the resource and the man power to seek revenge. If you support the neo-conservative view that these countries need regime change in the interest of US defence then you will have to accept the fact that more terrorist attacks will happen and there is nothing that we can do about it. The fact that the US supports israel in its oppression of the palestinian people, the fact that we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and we are going to invade more places in the forseeable future is the cause of the terrorism, not the solution.
This is a battle we cannot win. Yes these terrorists are sick, but they are an innevitable manifestation of the hatred that there is towards the west. Bush declared a war on terror, he's got one, and fighting an enemy without a base, without a face and with an infinite supply of recruits (from our own doing) he cannot win even with the largest most oppressive army in the world.
Posted by: Rick (UK) on July 11, 2005 03:50 PMRick, are you saying all terrorism is entirely the result of people angry with the foreign policies of other nations? If so, I strongly disagree. It's hard these days to discuss this clearly because there is Islamic terrorism (the bulk of what's conducted today) and then there's localized insurgent-style terrorism that other countries face from ideological factions within. The former is the primary problem for Western nations and even then not all of it can be solved by withdrawing behind our borders and returning to a neutral, hands off stance towards all outsiders. There are those radicals who want more, who want death for publicity's sake.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is beyond my available time and scope to discuss. However, as I am opposed to all foreign aid, I am opposed to supporting the Israeli state militarily and the Palestinian Authority financially.
I don't see the US military being the most oppressive in the world. I do see it having the largest footprint, which can appear to be the same thing.