Quote:
Originally posted by Stompy
You can't get rid of terrorism. It's a big illusion that is very similar to the war on drugs.
You'll NEVER stamp out terrorism by "attacking" them. All that does is create more of them. If they were to capture Osama, that wouldn't get us anywhere because of the vast amount of terror cells that co-exist. Someone else would simply take over as leader.
The fact of the matter is we're pretty much SOL. I can't prove it now, but I guarantee you this "war on terrorism" will be going on the rest of our lives.
9/11 made it obvious we needed to do something, but NOT what we're doing now. It's just making it worse. If I'm not mistaken, it boils down to how the US treats the middle east.
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To stamp out terrorism in the long term we need to protect ourselves in the short term. Taking the fight to them and forcing the organizations to revamp and restructure buys us time to change root causes of terrorism. Creating hope for the future in terrorist hotbeds, changing the perception that the US is anti-Muslim, growing understanding of other religions and belief systems, building alliances with Muslim governments and groups, etc takes time and until that can take root we need to cause damage to the terrorist infrastructure that has been built over the last several decades.
It goes way beyond how the US "treats" the Middle East as a significant portion of terrorist groups is against us for our belief that Israel has a right to exist, that our culture (that's right our entire culture) is anathema to their way of life, that our culture is seeping into and overshadowing theirs, etc, etc, etc.
In your estimation, how would the "proper" response happen? Remember that not only must we fight the long term terrorist threat but we must also protect our citizens in the short term.