Topic: How to reduce terrorism. (Read 1819 times)

Actually Herodes is theoretically correct on how to properly fight an insurgency.  This battle is not about the number of enemies killed.  It is for the support of the local population.  A guerilla insurgency uses terrorist tactics to cause chaos and fear among the local population.  They can quickly blend in and out of the local population.  When the occupying force comes in to sweep out insurgents, those insurgences put up a small fight while the main force moves to a new location.

The tactics of the insurgency is to show the local population that the occupying force cannot protect them.  Without that proper protection the local population will then give their support to the insurgency that will protect them.

With this in mind, the only possible way for the occupying force to win is to build services for the local population.  As they do that they have to have lots of security.  They have to use a lot of intelligence to find the insurgents living within the population.  The occupying force has to take heavy casualties.  In the case of Afghanistan, the occupying force is NATO, and the NATO allies have to keep their populations in support of these tactics.  It is not just go in and kill a bunch of "evil-doers".

One of the best books written on this subject is Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice .  Also check out the free journal published by the United States Army War College, Parameters.

I fear we missed our opportunity to take the high road. It would have been so much easier to address the legitimate concerns that terrorists latch on to. Economic unfairness, policies that end up hurting regular Muslims.  Instead we decided to play the hand they dealt us. ...Stupid.
The Base had very few friends on 9/11. They were seen throughout the Islamic world as nut jobs. They made ridicules claims about the USA. "They want to steel your oil and turn your women into sluts and kill you." No one believed it.
Terrorism is an effective technique for goading someone into an irrational overreaction. GW Bush obviously did not understand this and did just what the base wanted. He launched a child like war against a people he knew nothing about. A lot of innocent people got killed, un-holly oil contracts were signed and, despite the fact that Afghanis did not want it, we decided they need to treat their women differently. What a fiasco.
Today the base is more powerful than ever. You will not hear this much, but it is true.

Love, friendship. That is how you fight terrorists. War is how you make terrorists.

OK skrillex

Surefire method to remove all terrorism from the world:

Kill all people.

Option #1
Easist way to get rid of Al-qaeda, DBAN. Then, even Photorec can't recover The Database.

Option #2
Erase all past and present CIA agents, since they created The Database.

If neither of those are feasible, pray that Haman is not put in charge of the world.

This is also true for every culture that once has been military dominating. Therefore you can't ever trust a brit, chineese, american, native from the maya or inks tribes, someone from mali, someone from former babylon or egypt, swedes, germans, french, portugeese, russians, spanish people and a fuckload of other people.

Also, most wars and terrorist attacks and murders and other gruesome things are done by men, and most commanders in both historical and present wars have been men, and most soldiers are men. Therefore, no men can be trusted.


OR!

Guilt by association is a filthy thing that should not be confused with arguments. Also, to distrust muslims. Really?

How to stop terrorism (the Middle East variety):

1. Stop fighting wars over there and get out of the Middle East.
2. Save a lot of money as a result.
3. Take a cue from Volkswagen's 268 mpg car and subsidize production of similar cars with taxes on less efficient cars.
4. Never buy oil from the Middle East again.
5. Watch the wealth of the Middle East disappear or watch them actually produce something other than oil.

Because Isreal is a US ally? Does it go much deeper than that?

The problem is that due to historical circumstances/decisions we have situations like Israel/Palestine and India/Pakistan. The middle east has had pretty much arbitrary borders drawn all over it. Many people think this was on purpose. Now our generation is left to deal with the effects.

Bombing the terrorists obviously creates more terrorists. It is like antibiotics, if you don't wipe out every single bacteria you are looking to kill it just makes antibiotic resistant bacteria. Alot of evolution has been driven by this arms race between animals and bacteria/viruses. In fact, looking back in evolution, jawbones, increased cranial capacity, and many genes allowing for complex brains all appeared at the same time due to transposons (kind of like viruses that never leave your body... they are just junk DNA that randomly gains the ability to cut itself out and splice in new copies, sometimes they mutate to become useful). Anyway, my point is that fighting terrorism is the equivalent of something that has been going on for over a billion years without nature finding a solution, but possibly the tactics and skills learned by society will end up being useful somehow.

I have known people who will not reason, I suspect many of those who end up as suicide bombers etc are like this. Possibly those in charge of them as well (although I think this is somewhat less likely). Rational terrorists will be suspicious and use the apparent victory as momentum for to achieve their political aims anyway, so I don't think just stopping and offering a hand of friendship will work unless you are willing to deal with being mistreated for a generation or three, which would be extremely politically unpopular and won't happen.

There are also the limited resources, religious factors, and the fact that most politicians (no matter where) are corrupt to contend with.

Conclusion:
Wait out the war that finally gets everyone tired of war and decentralizes everything, then invent a replicator or way to gain access to practically unlimited resources and new common enemies. Then build a new post-scarcity society. It's all in star trek. I don't have a serious answer.

Islam and the history of Islam are two different topics.  As a student of history I suggest both but the history of Islam is more pertient to the topic.