I certainly don’t have an answer to this question. Can anyone here propose a reasonable plan?
One thing for sure is that killing terrorists just causes more of them. You have to treat the causes, one by one.
Main source is of course the Middle East, and the main cause there is the Palestinian thing. So you absolutely have to solve that.
There will clearly have to be a Palestinian state, and decent security for Israel.
So I reckon Bush should offer this deal to both sides (getting UN security council backing first), take it or I take all your subsidies away:
Palestine gets the whole of West Bank and Gaza. If any settlers prefer to remain there they get full citizenship rights. Those who choose to go get no compensation from Palestine.
Israel gets full title to East Jerusalem (but must guarantee visiting rights to all) and does not compensate the 1948 displaced Arabs. Arab Israelis get full citizenship rights.
The UN mans the mutual borders until further notice, including the Dead Sea and Jordan River.
Palestine must agree to random inspections for WMD by the UN.
Each state acknowledges the other’s right to exist permanently.
Unequivocally, all extremists should be shot.
And then hanged.
What?
Use social engineering methods to surrupticiously start popular communist movement(s) throughout the Arabian penninsula, leading to communist coups in a few “minor” arabian countries, and an anti-Islamic communist guerrila movement (read: Commie terrorists) operating in Saudi Arabia.
With some luck, the Islamic hard liners will be too busy fighting with the commies to be concerned about the western world’s influences.
Well, speaking of the Islamic terrorist that have been a problem lately, the simplest soulution would be to kill all Muslims. Granted, that would be very immoral, and take a while and a lot of money to carry out, making it an unusable soultion.
Not a bad method ** Ranchoth **, but I really don’t like commies. Are there any other convient ideologies we could exploit in the Arab world to get them to simply fight amonst themselves, rather than attacking us? Another problem is all the fighting between Islamic and Communist(or other ideology) terrorist is that one side might damage the oil infrastructor, which is the only really important thing in the Middle East anyways.
(bolding mine - see below)
I’ll adress the ME situation only, 'cause that’s the one that interests me personally…
Your ideas sound pretty good to me (personally), but with a few minor nitpicks: [ul][li] Israeli Arabs already have full citizenship - including those living in East Jerusalem (those that have chosen to take it - many have rejected it)[/li][li] Do you mean the Palestinian-Jordanian border here? Otherwise I didn’t get that one[/li][li] Israel has accepted the Road Map, thereby explicitly accepting the fact of a future Palestinian state.[/li][/ul]
Note - there are plenty of Israelis who will disagree with my acceptance of these ideas. I represent myself here, not Israel
Dan Abarbanel
Torture to death the immediate family of any suicide bomber or other terrorist.
Destroy the world. It’s so obvious.
Define terrorist. One with the capability for terror? One with the motivation? Is a Chechen a terrorist? Is a Palestinian?
Killing them won’t work. Kill a terrorist and another grows in its place.
Despite the current President’s outlook, stopping terrorism (if such a thing is even possible) will not solve the world’s problems. Spreading liberal democracy with an iron fist will not solve the world’s problems.
Daddy Times Two is an anti-extremist extremist. Shoot him.
Don’t forget to hang him.
Well, my other plan involves killing every human being - will that work for you??
Just gotta wait for when The Stars Are Right, okay? 
Hmmm…Neo-Pagans, maybe? Yezidists or Mithraists, even?
Good point. Darn.
But really, all we’d need to do is find a cheap, clean, alternative to fossil fuels. Or just build a BUNCH of nuclear fission and coal-burning plants, and rig all the U.S. highways so that we could run our cars off of electric rails.
Well, with a bunch of fission plants one could simply make the gasoline out of coal or any other hydrocarbon source; right now it is to expensive to do so, but the latest thermal depolymerization methods may actually bring the cost down to near current oil prices.
I do like the idea of funding Mithraists terrorist though.
Or maybe some mythos cults, hmmm, the * Necromonicon * was written in Saudi Arabi, so the beliefs are native to the region. I should start looking into that.
Hmmm I’d have to say that after Iraq is governed by Iraqis, the US pulls all armed forces out of the entire Middle East. We then treat every country the same - fairly ! We have trade relations with everyone which keeps the oil flowing, thus keeping everyone’s economy healthy. No special aid packages for Israel. They’re just another country. If the US treated every country as equals, the terrorists would have nothing to bitch at us about, thus leaving us alone. The only time we go to war is as part of a United Nations action.
Now , say a terrorist STILL wants to screw with us . I say we use the STOMP Theory. I’ll use Afghanistan as an example …
US: Give us Osama
Afg: Nah
US : we’re going to destroy a city if you don’t give him up
Afg : Nah
US : That means every man, woman, and child is toast
Afg: Huh ???
US : Yep , an entire city will disappear and we’re not telling you which one in advance.
Afg: Oh yeah , uh , here he is !
The terrorists would be safe nowhere. Common people on the street would kick their ass if some dope was plotting something. "Hey, Douchebag, knock it off ! The US doesn’t play around and we’re ALL done if you keep it up "
That way we keep our noses clean, let their affairs be THEIRS, and our armed forces aren’t put in danger for nothing.
Yeah, it seems like somehow we have to fix the problem from the inside-out and not the outside-in. We need to get the people that are “closest” to terrorists to work against them. Now, how we get that to happen, I don’t know. Seems to me you can threaten people, starve them, force them out of their country, they will still hate YOU and not the real cause of their plight.
Blow the bejeezers out of them.
If this creates more poor ickle “disaffected youth”, then blow the bejeezers out of them, too.
Wash, rinse repeat.
It will never rid the world of terrorism, but it will minimise it.
Appeasement, historically, has not ever been an option.
You can’t rid the world of terrorism.
There will always be terrorists. That’s why a war on terror is a nonsense, because there’s no end.
You can mitigate one kind terrorism by addressing and seeking to compromise the root political causes of legitimate grievances which can sometimes lead to the creation of terror groups, while pursuing the terrorists through intelligence, legal, and security means. Do not forget, the existence of a terror group in support of a cause does not and should not negate that cause (something a lot of people forget).
Then you’ve got terror groups like Al Qaeda and Aum Shinko, for which the best you can do is intelligence, legal, security and occasionally extrajudicial assassination.
Overt militaristic assault will only ever create fertile recruiting ground because, right or wrong, people will then have a common enemy.
Killing thousands of innocents to achieve a goal? Sounds like terrorism to me.
Accept it as a part of life I guess, it ain’t going anywhere.
Kill everyone.
Many, many countries have been at the pointy end of terrorism for a long time, so surely if there was a solution, some clever person somewhere would have come up with it by now.
At one end of the scale there is diplomacy and appeasment while at the other there is genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Take your pick.
It won’t work.
We’ve had full-on terrorism now for well over a hundred years worldwide.
The only way you’ll stop terrorism of one group of people by another, is to eliminate all national and international boundaries on the map, the heart, the soul and the mind; eliminate differences in belief, philosophy, and creed; abolish avarice, pride, envy.
The killing of innocents to send a message, such as the destruction of cities, or the obliteration of a generation just because one or two may try to throw a rock at your armour and high-tech weaponry, will only spark more violence.
America reacted after September 11. The same would go for the “other side” in this “war”.
I do agree with jjimm.