Much as I doubt that Shimrod’s solution would work, you have to admire his methods. If you’re going to fight dirty, go the whole hog (sorry).
I have heard this comparison made a couple of times, mostly in response to the question “how can we declare war if they’re not a nation?” The US did declare a formal war against the Barbary pirates. (Who did at least have a location … the shores of Tripoli)
The analogy seemed to fit, and it does even more now that I hear your explication of it.
And if we take the “attack on civilization” chorus that Tony Blair is teaching the EU to sing, it seems that this may be the way we’re going to approach it this time.
Great post.
You people are doing wonderfully! Please keep going.
It could be argued that this already exists in every first world Western country except the United States-- but that’s for a different thread.
I also like your idea about the U.S. ceasing the sale of firearms and ammunition to war-torn countries.
My suggestion: Make everyone rich beyond their wildest dreams through nanotechnology. It’s a heck of a lot harder to be angry at someone when you’re not living in a hut.
I’d quite like to live in a hut
Seriously though, I think education is the way; educate you children that people are all different, for all sorts of diverse reasons and that’s what makes the world such an interesting place to be. Abolish categories.
I think it might be useful to point out that terrorism is rather the opposite of democracy. Terrorism is the way an insignificant minority imposes its political will upon the much larger majority. (Yeah, yeah, Samuel Adams, Garibaldi, Bolivar… that’s argument for another thread.) It is therefore entirely within American policy scope to denounce terrorism and the countries which support it.
Most of the nuclear powers, with the notable exception of China, are now representative governments. Terrorism, therefore, should be considered a number one threat.
My idea is both old-school and probably too new for the world today. Have the major powers of the world, and the UN if possible, announce that they will no longer recognize any government which even tacitly supports terrorism. Furthermore, those nations or aspiring nations which do resort to or support terrorism to further their goals should be attacked, subjugated, removed from their land base, and dispersed around the world to be assimilated or contained as conquered people as is their own desire.
Palestine is the most obvious and egregious example of an ignorant, barbarous nation which supports terrorism. Make them the first example: one more act of terrorism in their name, and they will join the hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians around the world who no longer hold citizenship in any nation because of their propensity for revolution and terror-tactics.
I have other, even more distasteful ideas.
Mangetout - Your idea about education is good but you didn’t take it far enough. Don’t just educate your children, educate all children. All people. Wipe out ignorance. Give people all over the world the skills it takes to debunk their leaders when they need to. This is admittedly not a quick fix, but the world could be a much better place 20 years from now.
Trouble is, educating other people’s children to be tolerant might not work if, for example the parents are fundies, then we’re right back to square one, so maybe it really is a battle we never can win.
Ok, I did go for shock value, I admit.
The thing is that there are two sets of motivation that have to be addressed. The planers have one set of motivations, and the agents often have another. The planers motivations are largely geopolitical and have very little to do with religion. They use religion as just one of their tools.
The agents motivations are largly religious, particularly in the case of the suicide bombers. They carry out the acts because of the promise of a reward in the afterlife. One of our stratagies needs to be to find a way to remove religion as a tool. We should look at the religion and understand it to find a way to defang it. If the agents want to go to paradise, how can we convince them that this is not the way to get there?
The problem is that while the planers will weigh things, and make what they beleave are reasonable decisions, the agents won’t. Once the religion card is played it very easily can escape the controll of the people that started it. The people at the top become afraid of their own people and can’t back down.
This is an unconventional type of war and it will require unconventional methods to fight it. While bombs are very satifying they won’t resolve the real issues, and I don’t think they will drive the enemy to a settlement. We need to find something that they fear sufficiently that they will prefer to negotiate instead of continuing the fight. Finding a way to turn the religious fanaticism back on them may be what we want to look for.
No problem from me. Been known to do it myself. And welcome into the REAL session.
“Terrorism” is not a single thing in one place at a time. The piracy analogy is very interesting and I’m glad to have heard it here. Piracy existed in ships and ports. Terrorists have no such limits. Pirates wanted a material thing–wealth. Terrorists want something immaterial. I’ve been thinking lately that what the current batch wanted was powerful enough to make teams of people (was the final number 18?) willing to die. The lone person willing to risk all for a cause will never be stopped–that kind of “terrorism” has been with us forever and will never be eliminated, ever. If we define the terrorism we currently want to eradicate as organized group terrorism, then we can try to attack the things that link the group and help the group maintain itself. Attack its communications, its finances, its supply chain, its morale, its recruiting. I don’t have lots of new ideas for how to do these things.
Our biggest problem in the current crisis, and the best hope for taking on bin Laden’s organization, is our intelligence system. For whatever reason, US intelligence currently apppears to be inadequate. However, with millions of Afghan refugees moving in and out of Pakistan, it seems like it should be possible for some country to infiltrate bin Laden’s organization–if not to get close to him personally, to locate organization assets. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Kuwait, for instance, may currently have a better chance of doing so than the US. I am not sure permanent intelligence-sharing/cooperation is a good idea in a world of nations still divided by other political interests, but would hope that the US could call in some chips in the current situation.
I think the ingredients of terrorism are hate, religious fanaticism, and desperation. ‘Desperation’ may not be the best term, so let me define the way I meant it to be used: a feeling that you have been disenfranchised, can have little effect on your surroundings, and have little left to loose.
Any military action, however warranted, is just a stop gap. There will still be people willing to teach a corrupt form of their religion, there will be still be ancient hatreds, and there will still be those that feel their voices will not be heard except through violence. IMHO, the only people who can really stamp it out are those that live with it in their midst, and it must be through education and understanding. It will take a willingness of Palestinian, or Afghani, or what have you, fathers and mothers to pull their children aside when they see them exposed to the rhetoric and explain to them that Christians and Jews are not evil. Islam does not condone hate. It will take generations, and is mostly beyond our control.
When I moved into my house in the country nine years ago I discovered that I shared my property with millions of fire ants. I purchased chemicals and applied them to the mounds. Thousands of ants were killed. Those that lived moved a few yards away and rebuilt. I applied chemicals to the new mound. Thousands of ants were killed…
Eventually I managed to get rid of most of the fire ants who’d invaded my property and caused pain and misery to me, my children and my pets. Note that I said most, because depsite my efforts an occassional mound pops up and it’s necessary to break out the Orthene and continue the fight. But the problem is manageable now, and so long as I am vigilent and destroy the nests as soon as they are identified, it will continue to be so.
Single-minded, systematic identification of terrorist cells, training camps, safe houses and harbors, followed by surgical strikes conducted by a multi-national military force dedicated to their eradication is certainly a viable option. The process would be endless, bloody and effective.
“The best way to stop an enemy is to make him your friend.” Very hard to do, but better than the alternative.
(Maybe the US can lead by example, like trying to make amends to the Middle Eastern countries we’ve screwed with all these years?)
el_mono, I agree completely, and it’s an excellent analogy.
The solution to this type of threat is not a one-time blast here or there, as most of us agree by now. It’s an on going process, and multi-faceted. Finding and eradicating the pests (munderous scum in this case) is one aspect, complete isolation from the world is another - for those who do the acts and those who support them. Extreme measures must be taken by all nations who oppose terrorist activitites, including the French! (sorry had to get that in). Not just token words of support, and then back to business as usual, but sustained, extreme measures to stop all activities that support these groups.
Australia - thank you for leading the way: “There is no use in being an 80% ally”.
Hi Hazel,
I have typed about this before at kinfonet. I think
there will either be Alpha Male Sperm Banks, or genetic
engineering along with Memetic Engineering in the near
future. Our biggest fear should be Memetically Engineered
Robots with Emotions. Use google search engine, and
type in any of these, “memetics”, “bill joy”, “human
in the loop”, “eugenics”, for detailed information.
We have to look at religion as a “meme complex”, break
it down, computer model it, start with simple rules,
let it run in a Darwinian fashion, look at the results,
compare the results with what we have now. The Santa Fe
Institute has a program called “Sugarscape” that could
probably be used.
As far as Alpha Males go, I would go to places like the
Santa Fe Institute, check the males for Bilateral
Symmetry, collect the sperm from the most Symmetrical,
freeze the sperm, bank it, sell it to all females that
are stuck with beta male husbands (80%), using the
80/20 law.
About a year ago I was in this lesbian book store in
Santa Fe, and came across this feminist book about
degenerate males. The book read that 95% of the
incarcerated usa citizens were male. The author
suggested that all males should pay a surtax for being
male. This money would go to pay for the expenses of
incarcerated males.
jesse (redneck beta male that practices coitus
reservatus, and coitus interruptus)
(brightly)
Now, isn’t that special! Any more ideas, anybody?
Terrorism will likely crop up in various situations. The bigger, more urgent problem is religious extremism. Take away the impetus for people to follow the religious extreme, and we remove (or at least reduce) the driving force behind terrorist attacks.
People tend to gravitate to religion in times of stress (case in point, the entire US seems to be going to church right now). The higher the stress level, the more extreme the religious appetite (or political ideology, in some instances). Impoverished countries, countries without basic human rights, and countries ravaged by war, are those under the most stress.
I think that if we put the job of assisting such countries (despite their political beliefs) at the top of our foreign policy, we not only reduce the probability of religious extremism, but we also put our best foot forward among the people of said countries.
Better still, this should be a function of the UN, so as to even out the monetary load for the role of being the world’s benefactor.