Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Alternate Thinking About Terrorists	MarySusan	08/29/06
There is one theory that 911 was Bin Laden's plan to scare America in to removing their troops and bases from the Islamic Holy Land.....there are now only 300 American soldiers there, and Bush said in a televised appearance some time ago when asked about Osama, "I dont' think about him any more"...we closed our Bin Laden office in the FBI....Bin Laden's mission accomplished? AlQuaeda is splintered into various groups, the centralized leadership decimated...Bin Laden and the good Dr from Egypt making occasional television appearances. We see the results of the Lebanon War. Israel was severely beaten because they couldn't FINISH OFF SUCH A PRIMITIVE, fighting force with sophisticated air power and weapons, an army of trained soldiers, a superior intelligence force. I see no way to defeat terrorism by force and violence. Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanista has proven that. Time for some serious thinking about American foreign policy. Note: nothing in the world will solve the violence problems between Jews and Palestineans. The reason, they are *both correct* in their reasons for the existence or non-existence of Israel. Terrorism of all kinds has always been with us, and it will go on into the future, hopefully at a lesser pace, so time for creative approaches and super espionage and intelligence and police work to lessen the death. Any comments?
Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 08/30/06 6:56 pm: Marysusan, War is the only way to defeat terrorists. They will only be stopped when they are dead. Arresting them doesn't stop them. Appeasing them doesn't stop them. Making agreements with them doesn't stop them. Ignoring them doesn't stop them. Intimidating them doesn't stop them. We have tried all those methods and they have proven to be utter failures. -We ignored them in the 60s and 70s as they hijacked airplanes by the job lot. So they became bolder and more organized... eventually attacking the Munich Olympics, blowing up US Marine Barracks in Beirut, etc. Ignoring them clearly didn't work. We arrested them throughout the 80s in the West Bank and Gaza. They just kidnapped civillians to force prisoner exchanges, and the same guys that were arrested went back out and continued their terrorism. So arresting them didn't work. We appeased them with offers of land and aid, also in the West Bank and Gaza. They took what we offered but kept attacking anyway. Appeasement didn't work. We made deals with them. Israel pulled out of Lebanon as agreed in 2000. It didn't stop Israel from being attacked by Hizbollah anyway. Deals didn't work. We intimidated them with our superior firepower in the first Gulf War, and then with our bombs after the USS Cole was attacked. That didn't stop them from attacking us either. Intimidation didn't work. However, when Israel assasinated the leaders of Hamas and the PLO, those terrorists were no longer able to go back and commit acts of terrorism again. Others did, but not the ones who were killed. And the more that died, the fewer the number of terrorist attacks that Israel suffered. So that seems to be the only effective way of stopping a terrorist from committing attrocities. The only time a terrorist stops trying to kill innocent civillians is when he is dead. Ergo, war is the only effective means of stopping them. The logic is simple. Sad as it is, sometimes war is the only solution. Elliot Clarification/Follow-up by MarySusan on 08/30/06 8:00 pm: Annihilate Iran and make a lot of the oil in the Middle East radioactive????? bwahaha haha hahahahaha Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 08/31/06 11:11 am: MarySusan (Chou?), What makes you think that using nukes on Iran would make the oil radioactive? Aside from the fact that today's American nukes are relatively clean with very short recovery times from radioactivity, the radiation would have to somehow penetrate miles of rock in order to contaminate the oil. Or else it would have to penetrate pipes made of LEAD and other metals to contaminate the oil. Sorry, but the old science-fiction stories of a country being turned into a radioactive wasteland because of a few nukes are pure fiction. In reality, the areas would become habitable very quickly after a nuclear strike using modern nukes. And the oil would be usable quite quickly. So risks of losing the oil isn't really a reason not to nuke Iran. There might be other reasons not to, but oil considerations aren't among them. Elliot
Answered By		Answered On
ETWolverine		08/30/06
MarySusan, >>>We see the results of the Lebanon War. Israel was severely beaten because they couldn't FINISH OFF SUCH A PRIMITIVE, fighting force with sophisticated air power and weapons, an army of trained soldiers, a superior intelligence force. <<< And now we see the power of the terrorist propaganda machine... you've fallen for the oldest ruse in the book. You really believe that Israel was "severely beaten". The fact is that Israel did not loose the war in the conventional sense. Hizbollah has been crowing about having SURVIVED. They didn't win, they lost badly. Approximately a quarter of their fighting force was killed outright, and another 30% was captured. They used or lost 80% of their missile- and rocket-firing capability. And in every case where they went up against Israeli troops in face-to-face battle, they lost badly. So their celebration is over the fact that they survived at all. But to say that they beat Israel is a huge misinterpretation. That said, Israel did NOT accomplish its stated goals in the war in Lebanon. Israel did not wipe out Hizbollah and Israel did not get back its kidnapped soldiers. Because they failed to do those things, Israel has lost its image as an undefeatable and unstopable fighting force. THAT is what Israel has lost. And that is not because of anything the Hizbollah did, but rather because Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert screwed up. He overestimated his troops capabilities and sent too small a force to do the job in the short timeframe he was given. If the war had gone on longer, Israel would have wiped out Hizbollah completely, it just would have taken more time. If Ohlmert had used a larger force, he could have wiped out Hizbollah within a short timeframe, but the Lebanese civillian casualties would have been higher. So Ohlmert had a choice to make: used a small force, but give them enough time to finish the job, or else use a large force to end the war quickly and accept the fact that there will be higher civillian casualties. The problem is that Ohlmert choose neither of those two options: he chose to use a relatively small force but didn't give them the time to do the job, and the result was terrible for Israel's image as a fighting force. But to say that Israel lost or that Hizbollah won is a complete misinterpretation of the facts. As for defeating terrorism, I believe that it can be defeated. Israel has brought the level of terrorism coming from the West Bank and Gaza to a trickle... almost to zero. It was done with a combination of creating secure borders (the security wall), police and intelligence operations, and a willingness to hit the enemy back when they attack, including targetted assassinations of terrorist leaders and all-out infantry and cavalry assaults, when necessary. It also helps to have a population that is aware and vigilent of terrorist activity. The same is poccible elsewhere. We could easily eliminate the insurgency in Iraq if we were allowed to do so by the politicians. If US and Iraqi troops were to secure the borders to keep insurgents from crossing the border, stage all-out assaults of insurgency goups and targetted assassinations of insurgency leaders (including Muktada al Sadr), and helped the police and intelligence units of the Iraqi government come fully on line, then the insurgency could be quickly eliminated. The problem is that our politicians don't let the troops stage such attacks or assasinations, don't want to interfere with foreign borders, and are unwilling to stay the course for long enough to bring the Iraqi military, police and intelligence infrastructure online. In short, I believe that terrorism CAN be defeated. I just think that our leaders aren't letting us do so. Elliot

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