How can one defeat terrorism?

Dseid - I wish I could get more enthusiastic about what might, or might not be classed as terrorism but, I find I get bogged down in the minutia of a given definition. Which doesn’t really take the discussion on very far.

FWIW, I pointed out, what I perceived to be the flaws in the definition of Caleb Carr, as posted by Doug Bowe, because that definition seemed to do no more than serve his purpose – just as many other characterisations do the politicians. Maybe it is helpful but arguing who’s a terrorist (or even an ‘eco-terrorist’) doesn’t really get us anywhere. The real issue, for me, is that members of a society – not estranged from that society but a radicalised wing thereof – feel so motivated as to want to kill and maim. Why do they do that and what can be done to make them desist ?

In general and as stated above, sure you can, and should, go after them but they’ll simply be replaced by others, in that generation or succeeding. As I’ve stated often before, the truly worrying aspect of 9/11 (in this respect) is that the perpetrators were educated, mature and professional, (predominately) family men with a lot to live for – they weren’t hot-headed kids on the West Bank with an AK47 and a malleable mind: Once radicalism passes into the middle-classes you’ve truly got serious problems.

IMHO, the US has to go after the perpetrators but it also has to go at the causes of terrorism. And that requires that US Foreign Policy – as practiced by all shades of political persuasion – sheds a mind set of some 30-40 years duration. For example (and as far as Arab society is concerned), someone has to be responsible for three generations of refugees on the West Bank, someone has to be responsible for exploitation, for high taxation to repay loans incurred by exploiting, corrupt and self-serving former western-friendly leaders (example: Pakistan), someone is pursuing an agenda in the region that isn’t in our best interests, someoneis/has screwed us over, etc, etc…and the US is perceived to be that ‘someone’.

And, ultimately, no one’s going to be convinced otherwise by mere attempts at perception changes, or ‘spin’.

Hence and in IMHO, Bush has already initiated steps to put in place the kind of political process needed as a precursor to attempt a Mid East Conference later this year. Again IMHO, that is a long way off but the log jam is beginning to move just a little.

Sofa King wrote:
“I think I have an entirely different bent upon things. Guerilla warfare and terrorism go hand in hand.”

So the partisans in WWII, were terrorists? :rolleyes:

You would not fight against an army that would occypy Your country? :eek:

You would not join into the guerilla warfare? (Naturally not the terrorist warefare!)

Sofa King wrote further:
"We, the sane part of the world, have to figure out a way to defeat the smallest, but most unpredictable, most annoying, and possibly most dangerous contingent of the world’s population, because now they have the weapons and the voice to propagate their nasty little wars and actually gain support."

I just wonder in what part of the world You are living? :confused:

Which partisans where, Henry B? If you think I’m talking about Jesus Villamor, you’re wrong.

As I said, terrorism is used in conjuction with guerilla warfare. Here is a fine example.

In order to defeat terrorism, you must change the minds of a vast majority of the population that supports terrorism. The very easiest way to do that is through the application of fear. There are other, less effective ways as well I am sure, and I certainly hope we can refine those other ways. But when the battle for hearts and minds comes up against naked terror, the terror has, to date, usually been more successful.

We have to try our asses off to succeed without resorting to our own brand of terror. But if things get bad enough, the gloves are gonna come off and this silly little war is going to end in one hell of a hurry, because we already know exactly how to win it the dirty way.

The Palestininans are right next to one of the most powerful armies in history. They are to upset to be afraid anymore. Sofa, your idea makes their opinions of Sharon and Israel correct. That confirms in their eyes that Israelis are indeed marauding, murderous interlopers of their land, and they have nothing to lose. I am not betting against a group that has nothing to lose.

‘removal’ not ‘application’.

Have to agree with Efrem. And let’s take capacitor’s thought, too;

*If an unjust and rapacious conqueror subdues a nation, and forces her to accept hard, ignominious, and insupportable conditions, necessity obliges her to submit; it is an oppression which she endures only so long as she wants the means of shaking it off, and against which men of spirit arise on the first favorable opportunity. *
–Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations

I believe the above thought shows what leads to terrorism.
As Dseid pointed out, the end of terrorism may or may not be just.
As an aside, in defining terrorism as an attack against civilians Americans would have to include Wm. T. Sherman in those ranks.

Yep, and you know what Wm. T. Sherman said?

–letter to U.S. Grant, 1864

Sofa King, was the Sherman quotation intended to support your argument that terrorism is fought most effectively by the application of terror? If so intended, I think the quote fails in the task.

If we consider Sherman to be a terrorist (which you apparently agreed to), then one question we must ask is if his campaign could’ve been impeded or prevented had the Confederacy adopted an asymmetric strategy (suicide bombings in Washington, attacks on Pennsylvania farmers, etc.). It seems unlikely that this would’ve done anything but spur the Union to even greater brutality in Georgia.

We must also ask if Sherman’s campaign succeeded in discouraging future Southern resistance. Sherman’s goal was to subjugate the South through brutal deprivation and destruction. His brilliant success at this, followed after the war by a false “Reconstruction” of the South, rather than preventing terror, gave rise to the Ku Klux Klan and more than a hundred years of fear and distrust of the North by southern “rebels”.

I fear Sherman’s example, while a great illustration of winning strategy in a war of conquest, shows the great flaw in “fighting terror with terror”. —The flaw is that, while the application of greater terror against an enemy population greatly limits resistance, it also ensures and legitimizes continued resistance.

We can never reduce terror by adding to it, we can only temporarily redirect it. And by doing so make ourselves just targets for every subjugated people on the planet. America can become victorious Rome, if we want, but that’s not what we’re supposed (Constitutionally and in popular ideology) to represent.

The short answer is: You can’t defeat terrorism. As long as one body feels (rightly or wrongly) that their views or goals are not being advanced by another body there will be conflict. Add unequal resources to the conflict and you have the weaker body taking up terrorist acts out of what it deems to be necessity. The stronger power can never hope to completely overcome the weaker body short of genocide - there will always be pockets of discontent and those who feel that the only way that they can have a voice is through the use of terrorist acts.

Anyone who vows to conduct a “war on terrorism” is going to be defeated and America needs to wake up to that fact.

I’ve been trying to think of examples of where terrorism has been successfully (permanently) eradicated without addressing the injustices of the mainstream of the society from which it originates. Plenty of examples of pre-independence terrorism in ye olde British Empire but that was primarily about jostling for power in the forthcoming independent State. Can’t think of any other examples just at the moment…anyone ?

This is a key point, I believe, and Xeno makes it much better than did I.

I suppose if the Civil War hijack is to continue, it’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves that more Southern men died post-Civil War in Union detention camps than did US troops in the entirlty of Vietnam - one assumes that kind of subjugation isn’t likely now, but is it representative of the kind of policy required to suppress dissent amongst a morally unbowed people.

If so, the US cannot win this war.
Back to my ‘hearts and minds’ bell curve, I’d venture.

Hey, I don’t disagree with xenophon, or London, or even efrem. I apologize for being unclear, as I very often am.

But let’s take the legacy of Sherman a step further. Sherman (and Grant, and Sheridan) destroyed the enemy’s ability to wage conventional war, as has Israel, for the moment.

I agree that even in 1865, the South’s ability to further wage war was possible, and encouraged, and enacted.

But what happened after that was…

…Occupation. And the threat of worse, occasionally enforced. And the promise that if the Klan expanded, everyone’s rights would be further restricted. Some bright boy eventually figured out that cooperation was the best way to proliferate the Confederacy’s particular brand of evil. And it was compromise which salved the problem, but not while the loser was still active and widely visible in its terrorism. And we (Americans) were fortunate that a vast number of those would-be terrorists died in the war before they could beat their swords into booby traps.

And eventually, the South became content with the smaller evil of localized racism, hatred, murder, and corruption, rather than open rebellion. To date, a hundred and forty years later, the South has been shamed into a reasonable facsimile of cooperation. (I’m a Virginian, by the way, until someone figures out where I live.)

Yes, it’s going to take that long, if not longer. But I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna pull a Ted Williams, wake up a hundred and forty years from now, and find suicidal Palestinians blowing up our transporter nodes. Fuck no. Someone’s gonna kick their asses first, for good, by violence or otherwise, or we’ll all die for not trying.

I have no doubt that the world will be full of assholes in the future, but this style of warfare will be obsolete, one way or the other.

Or whoever is left will be flaking rocks for a living.

WTF?

Well, I guess that’s the problem with summary statements regarding complex history. It kinda sounds like you think racism, hatred, murder and corruption have been localized to the South since the Civil War. -I know that’s not what you meant, but it tends to highlight the inadequacies of too-brief historical analyses.

The South has not been “shamed into a reasonable facsimile of cooperation.” Understanding the actual history of post-War southern states does indeed shed light on the Israel-Palestine dillema, but it certainly doesn’t reveal what you think it does. If the South is now “cooperating” with the Northern states, it is because of the one successful Reconstruction policy; that of immediate reengagement of the South into the national political process. This policy succeeded in spite of the severe economic disadvantages faced by the southern states in the last 35 years of the 19th century. It succeeded in spite of the brutal instincts of many politicians and businesses in the North.

Political engagement is what reintegrated the South back into the Union, not brutal occupation. In fact, and as you well know, it was the avoidance of a full occupation that enabled some retention of dignity and autonomy in the former Confederate states.

If that last post seemed overly contentious, Sofa King, I apologize — I do understand and respect your opinion; I just don’t think history supports the idea that military force is the best long term solution to terrorism.

First of all, I wish people would stop trying to cloud the issue by turning every discussion about terrorism into a semantic debate over “soldier”, “terrorist”, etc or by smugly making comparisons to Hiroshima, Dresden or any other number of other military operations. The issue is that we have an enemy who has demonstrated a willingness and an ability to inflict great harm on us. Whatever name you give to these people is largely irrelevant to addressing that issue.

Second, I think the solution to solving the terrorist issue falls somewhere between sqweels’s Cumbaya concert and Sofa King’s Colonel Kurtz speech (the horror, the horror). Wishfull thinking and good intentions will not make terrorism go away and brutal occupation is not only against what America stands for, it is impractical that we could occupy every place terrorists may hide.

Third, I don’t know if calling this a “war” is the right term. When I think of wars, I think of the entire resources of a nation coming to bear against a problem for a short period of time and until an objective is achieved. A “war” footing is not sustainable for long periods of time because it is resource intensive and morally draining. The “war on terrorism” has to be more of a long term policy shift that defines how we interact with the rest of the world.

Yes, violence against the Palestinians has worked so well recently for Isreal. So to respond to a few nutters who are so full of hate they can’t listen to reason we should kill and wound thousands of innocents, who will grow up with hate in their hearts and with nothing to lose, will strike back again and again. (what, you think they’ll see you as just retaliating? Most of them didn’t do anything wrong, they will see you as mass murderers that need to be stopped no matter the cause. And i’d be inclined to agree)

Actually, it has. Note the decrease in Palestinian terrorist attacks recently. Isreal has been knocking off the bomb-makers (and their factories), and terrorist leadership persons, with enviable regularity.

If Israel wanted to visit unrestrained violence on the Palestinians, the Palestinians would have been gone long ago. Israel has show remarkable restraint in dealing with its ‘neighbors’.

Sofa King has the right idea, as unpopular as it may be. Until the various terrorist-breeding peoples of the world love us or fear us, they will keep churning out terrorists. And it is far easier to make them fear us then love us.

Brutus said: “And it is far easier to make them fear us then love us.”

This discussion is quite worthless, but I would like to ask Brutus:
Who is “us”?
We whities or who?

‘Us’ in this context means Americans. Feel free to replace ‘Americans’ with whatever nation you want, though. The principle is equally valid.

Drop your little race-baiting gambit, or save it for The Pit.

Just because there have been fewer attacks this week doesn’t mean Isreal has been sucessful. you have to look long term at stuff like this. Let’s see some figures five years from now and see if violence has gone up or down since Isreal first went to “war on terror.” Arresting certain terrorists is one thing(and in my opinion fine), invasion and firing on the populace at large is terrible. Arafat actually policing his own people would be a million times better than people they hate invading Palestine every week or so. Of course, that doesn’t seem that likely either. If someone was to dispense mass death, i’d kill both sides’ leaders.