Fighting Terrorism

I feel like we need some kind of balance for the “nuke Mecca” thread. I’d like to talk about some more realistic alternatives to fighting terrorism (specifically, the terrorism against the US, but this can also be more general).

There are the obvious conventional methods - Israel’s current “decapitate the hydra” campaign, using counterinsurgency (and sometimes brute force) to knock off terrorist leaders and hope the organization dies. Pluses to this are that it leaves the enemy confused and unorganized for a time - threatened “mass retribution” has not (yet) come. Minuses are that, among other things, it just pisses off people more.

There is the “screw them” method used by the United States - finding likely enemies, invading the country, and kill and/or arrest half of their population. The plus here is that it sends a rather strong and imposing message, and you get colonies to boot. The minus is that, again, it tends to piss a lot of people off, only on a much larger scale, has not been demonstrated to be effective in any way whatsoever, and tends to get you involved in prolonged regional conflicts. It also gets you into messy regional politics.

There is the Russian approach, which is decidedly Russian. This is similar to the US approach, but it doens’t bother with the finer points. It has the same drawbacks.

There is the “turtle shell” role taken by Europe - hide, try to look innocent, and invest in a decent counterinsurgency police force (demonstrated by Germany and France). This seems to be a rather positive approach, though it lends itself to having terrorist cells operate within the countries, making them gateways to the west. It also doesn’t protect them from some fundamentalist groups whose goal is to “destroy Western civilization.” On the other hand, Germany isn’t quaking in its boots.

Then, there is capitulation. Giving in to their demands. The major negative of this is that it assumes that the terrorists are infact sane and have specific demands. Another is that it encourages more terrorism. However, if done carefully (playing the great political shell game), a retreat can ease the pressure felt at least by the greater part of the society. This also encourages friendly relationships with regional governments. This can be, needless to say, tricky. This tactic is explored frequently in Latin America, and proves to be rather hit or miss, depending largely on who you are dealing with.

Lastly, you have your long term method(s). Suck it up, take the pain, and hope that in a generation or two, your peaceful relations and cultural expansion will calm the situation down some. Work with their government to change their education structures. Generally, play nice while subtly working your culture into theirs, making them familiar with you, and hope they get over it. Obvious negative here is that this can take generations to work, and it only takes one hostile leader on either side to ruin everything and make you start over. This isn’t much of an option for democracies, since power will change hands too frequently to rely on constant good relations. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of many cases where this actually worked.

Oh, one other. Find a common ground. Find something that is so despicable or threatening or otherwise bad that you can join hands with your former enemy to combat it. An example of this would be the USSR. Amazing how quickly France and Germany kissed and made up after that whole WWII thing when they had a few million Soviet soldiers sitting on their doorstep. Not a terribly likely thing to happen with respect to Al Qaeda, however…

Well, I don’t think there is any one perfect method…a single silver bullet thats going to magically make terrorists and terrorism go away. Its going to take a combination of things, even including regular military incursions a la the US in Afghanistan.

One front is going to be counter insurgency special forces type surgical strikes and opperations. Another is in cyber space, finding and cutting off funding. Police type work also factors in, as well as international cooperation and information sharing to identify and eliminate terrorists opperating within the various nations. Its going to take military strikes, either air strikes/cruise missile strikes against terrorist camps in soveriegn nations or even full scale invasions if necessary a la Afghanistan. Finally its going to take international cooperation and a comittment to stopping this thing…that its unacceptable for soveriegn states to support, even through appathy, terrorists and terrorist organizations opperating within their national boundaries…and that the penalties for getting caught supporting terrorists or their organizations could be quite severe.

I think that a lot of different nations are working off different play books and doing their own thing. As you said, the US is doing one thing, the EU another, etc etc. But I don’t think anyone is putting all the correct pieces together to really effectively go after terrorists in a meaningful way.

-XT

Oh, something I forgot in my list but thats also important: To work to alleviate the conditions that make terrorism possible. This could include such things as encouraging financial stability and representation of the people in the ME and elsewhere where terrorists are formed or created…and come to some accomidation with Israel that is acceptable to both sides. Maybe use some of the lessons from Ireland and try and find some way to break the constant cycle of violence.

Its a two way street of course with both sides necessarily having to compromise. Thats going to be the hardest part. While the West is going to have to modify some of its behavior, the ME is going to have to change as well to make it work. One thing thats going to have to be done is the terrorists are going to have to come to the realization eventually that Israel is here to stay. I think its going to be a long slog…

-XT

An equitable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem would undermine Al-Queda’s ability to recruit. I can’t think of any other single measure which would be as effective.

Well, I agree fully with this, as I hinting in one of my “solutions” - work alongside them, build them up, and over time, become their trusted friend instead of invading enemy. I thought, for a while in the '90s, that we could do this with Iran, at least, but I think we crossed a line where that isn’t an option any more. It is frustrating, because Bush’s policies have alienated so many people and governments that it is going to be very hard to seek a long term “companionship” with any of them. They gambled the big bucks on turning Iraq into America Jr., and so far they seem to have fallen short of the goal (to say the least).

Pre-Iraq, I think that a reasonable course of action would have been to back away from Israel, back away from the Saudis, talk up Iran and Pakistan, and invest a lot of foreign aid into those countries (along with Jordan and the other smaller ME nations). Over time, I think, they would cozy up to the idea. Iraq would still be a blister, but one that could be dealt with more easily by working WITH the ME community than AGAINST them (especially Iran and SA).

That is all if I could play God. I don’t think it was ever realistically possible - there is too much foreign company involvement.

Terrorism is just a tactic. Like a flanking movement. How do you fight that?

Let’s focus all of the resources that we can as a nation into developing hydrogen as a replacement for Middle Eastern oil. Once we don’t need their oil, they’d be free to go on doing what ever it was they used to do before we started contaminating their culture with our money and porn, isolated from the rest of the world.

Bushco’s friends in the oil business may not be too happy, nor will the House Of Saud, but I’m getting tired of paying people to blow our shit up. Maybe the next administration might do a JFK we’re-going-to-the-moon-by-the-end-of-the-decade speech and let good ol’ American ingenuity save us, like in the good old days.

Oh yeah, one more thing: Let Israel pay for her own security.

If we replace Bush with Kerry, that will help. Not that Kerry will immediately pull out of Iraq – he won’t (see an article in the July/August issue of Atlantic Monthly, “Kerry Faces the World” by Joshua Micah Marshall – a very good analysis of the foreign-policy views of Kerry and his closest advisers). But at least Kerry will be in a position to blame the whole mess on the previous administration, rather than the United States as such. All the angry Muslims won’t buy that, of course, but some will. That will help. And then Kerry can go around and make nice with at least some of the countries, European and Islamic, that Bush has alienated. Kerry’s stated intention in Iraq is to “internationalize” the occupation, that is, get more countries involved in it; and if he really means that, to pull it off he’ll have to smooth a lot of ruffled feathers and rebuild a lot of burnt bridges. I think he can do it – I think a lot of foreigners Bush has angered in the past two years will actually be eager to forgive the United States, if we only give them an excuse to do so by presenting a different face to the world.

Whatever you think of Bush, it’s not any country that we have a problem with wrt terrorism. Remember that the 9/11 attacks were planned long before Bush as president was a glimmer in the GOP’s eye. In fact, ObL consistently states that he is trying to undercut our alignment with the gov’t of Saudi Arabia. He doesn’t **want ** us to make nice with them. It is naive in the extreme to think that a change in party of the White House will make a difference to the Islamic terrorists.
They want the overthrow of the Saudi regime and the elimination of a Western presence in the Middle East. How will Kerry make a difference in that respect?

I think maybe the point was that securing better relations with other countries (in Europe and especially the Middle East) will be helpful in fighting against the hardcore fanatics like bin Laden. Now is not the time to have our own allies against us, or to be driving moderate (or at least less-totally-batshit-favoring-reactionary-Islamic-revolution) Muslims into bin Laden’s arms.

It won’t make any difference to the hard-core terrorists. It will help undermine their support.

A few months before 9/11, an Al-Quida cell in Europe was planning to bomb a shopping mall (in Frankfurt IIRC). The operation was foiled and most of the cell arrested thanks to help by Muslim informers. This is a good example of how badly we need co-operation from the Muslim world in order to fight terrorism effectively. The more aggresseive the US is, or is percieved to be, the easier it is for the average Muslim to ignore the terrorists.

The Northern Ireland peace process only gained momentum when the majority of the population opposed the violence.

Another good example “Attacking west a sin, say Saudi clerics.” Statements like this will be far more effective if the US is not generally percieved as an agressor in the Middle East.

Yes, win their hearts and minds. :-p

I think what the Bush admin doesn’t realize is that they are international - and ME - politicians as much as they are American politicians now. They have to make allies and play nice as possible to gain their cooperation and support, not alienate and give cause. We need to be innocence personified O_o

I wasn’t saying Kerry could make nice with the terrorists, nor change their agenda. But he might smooth things over with the peoples of the Islamic nations, who hate America a lot worse now than they did before the Iraq war – which produces more and more recruits for terrorist organizations.

Speaking as a former infantryman - you either lay down an ambush, or flank them first. You have to fire the first shot to win.