We WILL negotiate eventually, so why not sooner rather than later?

I can’t think of a single MAJOR terrorist group that has given up/ been defeated without negotiation.

The topic for debate is:

We will never defeat them, so why not negotiate now rather than later?

In an effort to deflect some obvious replies, can we assume that we CAN communicate with OBL and his minions and that their their stated aim of “wiping us from the face of the Earth”, is negotiable.

IMHO,
I’d rather that we always be on the right side of things to begin with so that we could say screw negotiating w/ terrorist, and not only be justified in ignoring their demands, but mean no negotiating w/ terrorists.

Until then, I suspect that we’ll follow The Gipper’s example.

New names, same old politics.

The hardliners against terrorism are (in many cases, quite literally) the same people who were hardliners againts Communism. They just found a new cause, and this time they don’t have that pesky MAD thing hanging over their heads to restrain them from doign a pre-emptive strike, as they did in Iraq.

Just like some people would have never ever negotiated with the Soviets, some people won’t with terrorists. I think the number is larger, because the Soviets were a real nation, instead of a rogue group. HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that we can’t play the same kinds of politics that we did with the Soviets - thrusts, bluffs, feints, concessions, that kind of fun stuff.

That is what they’re doing it with us, only they are following through with some of their threats. I don’t see much difference between the two, and I think that, in a few decades, we’ll see the US government negotiating with them through proxy of Muslim leaders.

Another key difference is that the more people we kill, the bigger a hole we dig for ourselves - that is the new MAD. Old MAD was immediate and obvious; you nuke them, the they nuke you. The new MAD is more subtle and longer term (and less understood by the Right). It is, you hit them, and in 20 years their kids grow up and hit you. This means we will never win the war with how we are fighting it - we will simply ensure future insurgence and make the next generation face the same (or worse) threat than we did.

We are also being judged in the court of world opinion, and the early findings have been rather dismal. I don’t think we can keep up Bush’s plans for much longer before we are considered on the same level as China, only with more muscle. Bush ahs already hacked international treaties to death, withdrawn from the International Court, and denied various UN inspectors into the country. Were this behavior displayed by any other country, they would have already been condemned.

Direct negotiation will not be possible for some time, however, there are policies of concession making that can ease tensions and defuse the long-term MAD situation, as well as give more favorable findings in the court of public opinion. It may not be likeable to some people, but that is the best we can do for now.

By the way, if you will recall, Bush made a statement in the 2000 campaign that he was not good with international politics, and once in the 2004 campaign about international law.

Is THIS the kind of person that we are SERIOUSLY letting lead us into global warfare? A man who admitted - on the campaign trail - that he isn’t experienced with international politics and law? A man who has done more to destroy America’s international status and reputation than any other person in history? And we think his policies are good enough to want four more years? And we expect it all to work out well in the end? Seriously?

This guy scares me.

What, you mean give Nancy’s astrologer a buzz? :wink:

“Trust, but verify” always struck me as a silly piece of doubletalk, since the act of veerification undermined the trust. Granted, I like the idea of verification, I just don’t see the need to wrap it in such a nonsensical phrase.

Can you think of a terrorist group that has given up because of, or been defeated
by, tactics that do include negotiation?

The IRA.

I can’t think of a single MAJOR terrorist group that has given up/ been defeated without negotiation.

Jordan tossed the PLO out of Jordan in 1970. The Syrians pretty much destroyed the Muslim Brotherhood in their country with the destruction of Hama. The US defeated Aguinaldo and his Phillipine resistance. Egypt defeated its Muslim Brotherhood. Saddam destroyed several groups in his time. The Bolsheviks defeated the Mensheviks. The Red Brigades, Baader Meinhof, and even some Palestinian terror groups are now defunct.

Guerilla or terrorist groups are by nature underdogs. Therefore, it is only logical to assume that they will usually lose. And lose they do, a lot more often than they win.

Americans and other Westerners seem to have psychologically viewed trying to fight guerilla wars as a losing proposition for Western armies ever since Vietnam. THe main reason is because guerilla wars are harder for Western armies today than conventional wars. Western armies tend to sweep aside conventional opponents with ease, but are not really much more efficient at handling guerilla resistance. But the outcome is usually still not in doubt. Given enough time and patience, most guerilla organizations can and are defeated. Only the best survive. And Al Qaeda doesn’t strike me as the most tactically intelligent group, or very numerous.

I just do not understand the concept of “war on terrorism” any more than I would understand a “war on land mines”. Terrorism is not a cause, it is not an end in itself, it is a means, a method, a tactic, used by many different groups for many different ends. As a concept, the US government “war on terror” is even stupider than the “war on drugs”.

So the question is: should governments negotiate with groups which use terrorism as a means? And the answer is “it depends”. A government should not negotiate because the group uses terrorist methods as this will only encourage more of the same. But the government should not absolutely refuse to negotiate just because it disapproves of the other sides’ methods because, simply put, that would make peace impossible ever.

The problem is not a “war on terror”. That is a really stupid simplication. The problem is finding ways to resolve conflicts without using force. And we all need to learn about that, including some western governments.

Except that the Philippines got their independence from the USA which is what the Filipinos were fighting for so that’s a strange way to use “defeat”.

“Trust, but verify” is an old and very common Russian proverb, and RR was dealing with Russians. He used opponent’s vernacular to justify his own actions. Very smart.

What “negotiation” do you see as a possibility? What “compromise” that all parties could accept? Who *are * the parties?

The one thing the factions appear able to agree on is who their common enemy is, and that they want us out. What, short of that, could they agree to accept, and in return for what? If they know we’re ready to pull out, why shouldn’t they just let us?

There is historical precedent for governments reaching accommodations with rebel or terrorist groups within their own borders, consisting of residents of that very country. But I don’t know of any resistance groups, opposing an occupation by a foreign power, who have ever seen any reason to compromise on that.

It’s also a big stretch, IMO, to refer to Aguinaldo and his rebels as “terrorists.”

Are the French still being hassled by Algerian separatists?

I’m sorry, I also found this cite a bit funny. The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were different arms of the same terrorist group to begin with. They were also strictly regimented political parties, not cell-based groups like we have running around today. It was much easier for the victorious Bolsheviks to decapitate and subdue the Mensheviks - not only because they knew their leadership intimately, but also because they were fighting for (basically) the same thing with different political control. The Soviet Revolution is a pretty complex deal - don’t boil it down to regime fighting terrorists, especially since most other countries were still calling the regime terrorists.

In general, most of the cites on your list are rebellions or domestic groups (which are frequently the same thing). We aren’t talking about a domestic group here. Those are relatively easily dealt with.

What we have to deal with is international terrorism, which is another beast. There is no set group of people who are leaders you can off and call it a day. There is no headquarters. It is more like a hydra - many different arms of the group acting independently and tied together by a common cause. For instance, the groups that have been targetting Spain have nothing to do with Osama.

The problem with fighting international terrorism is that the terrorists cover many countries and hide behind many governments. It is not possible to attack them wherever they go. We could conquer the entire Middle East and call it Amerikastan, but Al Qaeda and the other groups would still exist.

An additional problem is that the more you hit one arm, the stronger the other arms grow. We pissed off a lot more people invading Afghanistan and Iraq than we had mad at us before, and we created a great deal of sympathy for Al Qaeda that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.

Now, the other question to this issue - can we negotiate with Al Qaeda? Well, we run into the same problems with negotiations as we do with military action. There are many brances of the organization, and they aren’t under one guy. Osama could appear on international TV tomorrow french kissing Bush and order everyone to lay down their arms and go home - and most of them wouldn’t do it.

If you take them literally on their “we will wipe America off the planet” threats, you are pretty gullible. Unfortunately, this works against them, because most Americans are pretty gullible.

Still, you can limit how many people you do piss off, and hope most of them run out of money and/or interest and/or volunteers. You generally do this by figuring out what they want - in this case, they want American imperialism to stop. Of course, Bush would never agree to that, so it is a moot point, for now. We’ve also gone and gotten our paws tied up in Iraq, which makes following their requests entirely impossible for the next decade.

So no, negotiating won’t do anything for a while. This is why my suggestion was that, in 10-20 years, if we play it cool, we’ll be able to negotiate with the Islamic states themselves and by proxy come to an arrangement.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I wish I had a brilliant solution here, but the best I could have offered before the Iraq mess was get our paws out as much as possible, smile nicely, and hunker down. Now that we’re entangled in Iraq… well, I think we’re pretty fucked. We just took the reason they hated us and magnified it a few thousand times.

Obviously you know very little about negotiating. Negotiations generally assume a couple of things:

  1. Both sides have something to bring to the table
  2. There is some mutually beneficial position that both parties can agree on.
  3. There is trust that the either side will adher to the agreement.

By negotiating with terrorists you give anyone with a gripe a precident for causing mayhem and destruction in order to get their way. Without applying some sort of pressure to terrorist groups, you don’t bring anything to bargain with. Do as you say or you’ll blow us up? Not such a great bargaining position. And there’s no guarantee that they won’t start in again as soon as they feel an agreement doesn’t go far enough.

Is Algeria still a French colony? The separatists won. The French withdrew.

I wonder how in high hell we made it through the Cold War, with thinking like that.

Well, I was putting terrorist groups in the same category as guerilla groups, since they tend to overlap in terms of tactics.

If you only want examples of international terrorist groups, how about Carlos’s organization? Seems like that was handily taken care of without need for negotiation.

Which I hope you will agree was the right thing to do from the start. Or are you saying the French should have kept Algeria as a colony? In other words, French withdrawl from Algeria on day one of the conflict would have meant no need for terrorism. The fact that the methods used were immoral does not make their demands immoral and if their demands are just then by agreeing to them you are
(a) doing the right thing and
(b) Taking away a cause for terrorism.

Seems like a win-win deal to me. Sort of like the US getting the hell out of Iraq, if you know what I mean.