Anonymouse wrote:parados wrote:Anonymouse wrote:
I always wonder what gets into peoples heads. This whole war on terror, and the War in Iraq which is an extension of that, is not winnable. You do not declare war on a tactic - terror.
Since the war on terror is unwinnable, it leads us to the idea that our only hope is to reduce terror to the point where we can live with it. So far we have seen anyone that makes a statement about reducing terror to the point where we can live without fear or reducing it to the point it becomes a policing issue being excoriated for being unreasonable and on the side of the terrorists.
The reality is we will always have the Osama Bin Ladens, the Eric Rudolphs, the Timothy McVeighs. The key is to prevent them from becoming a movement. That is the only thing we can really fight.
Thank you for your response, however I still do not see the logic in declaring war on terror; a tactic which everyone has employed throughout history, even the United States. Conventional warfare against guerilla forces has rarely proven successful and one can handpick only a few examples of where it was successful. But beyond that, if history is a lesson to be learned from, it has shown that conventional armies and governments always underestimate the non traditional foe, and they always lose.
Your statement about living without fear, or reducing it is an interesting one. Do you suppose the Iraqis want to live without fear of bombs and war that has devastated their country? We are not the only ones who want to live without fear and/or minimal threats. At just what point does terrorism become tolerable where we can "live with it". Is there some measuring stick where we can measure it by? In fact, we have always been living with terror and before it was brought to the public consciousness with the vague "War on Terror". It's only after it was described as a "problem" that we began to make such qualitative statements. Unemployment existed without ever being a problem until the progressive movement which then saw government expanding to combat the 'problem". Previously it was just part of society and it is still with us today.
Regards.
Let me expand on my thoughts a little bit. The fight against terror can't be won militarily because people can act on their own ie Rudolph and McVeigh. It is only when someone like Bin Laden is allowed to amass a large following that the military even becomes an option. That means we need to fight it by trying to ascertain and eliminate the causes. "war" is the wrong word. In this case it elicites images of soldiers rather than the use of the term in the "war on poverty" or the "war on drugs" where it is a concerted effort rather than a military action.
In fact the use of military in Iraq seems to have the opposite effect on terrorism. It increased the number of incidents and the number of people willing to commit terrorism.
"living with it" was not meant to apply only to the US. It should apply to the entire world. As to how to quantify it? That is not an easy answer. As we both agree, we will always have it in some form or another. I think there is a difference between an organized group carrying out acts and the act of a small isolated group. Oklahoma City was an horrific act but we all went on with our lives pretty much unconcerned about it being repeated because the perpetrators were a small group that was caught. The Unabomber acted for years but it didn't affect our lives because he was known to be a single person. Where it hit home for the US was on 9/11 when we saw that a group of thousands was targetting us. This shows a blindness of US citizens. We usually ignore the groups through out the world that have committed such acts against other countries. Rebel groups in many South and Latin American countries, the red Brigade in Italy, the seperatists in Indonisia, etc. Living with it means it is isolated and doesn't consume our lives in thoughts or dollars.
