Given all the talk on here about the legality of drones, I'm wondering what you think the best way for the US to fight terrorism is in the coming future? I think shifting from a policy of war to one of law enforcement and containment is best moving forward. It's costly in terms of human life and currency to try and invade every country with an al-qaeda offshoot in it. Sure, it worked in Afghanistan, but we're fighting a multinational group. If we play it like Afghanistan, we'll have to invade Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and so on. It's unstable. Furthermore, I think if we focus on winning the hearts and minds of potential recruits, that we'll win 90% of the battle. What does that mean? Well, for starters we can stop backing dictators in the middle east. I'm not saying we should cave in to the demands of Bin Laden, but I think we need to realize that our actions may have long-term and unforeseen consequences that may bite us in the butt in the future. Lastly, I think we have to attack the main source for everything, cash flow. ATW, myself, and some other posters have mentioned "backdoor financing" that is where groups (usually the Kingdom) give money to a fundamentalist group, who provide money and/or material support to al-qaeda or some similar group. We froze Gaddafi's accounts. How hard is it to get all of the NATO countries or even Interpol to freeze the accounts of certain groups? Or sanction groups that finance al-qaeda? What do you guys think?
Furthermore, I think if we focus on winning the hearts and minds of potential recruits, that we'll win 90% of the battle. That's not happening in our life times. The Mullahs know that to maintain their power, and ensure the sanctity of Islam they are well served by having the Great Satan as a unifying focus. Iran will go secular 50 years before Wahabbistan.
Well, Mathloom wanted the old cartoonist to live in fear for the rest of his life and later retracted that and apologized. A tactical move, but still .
Containment is really difficult without violating a bunch of civil liberties. Since the twin towers attack it has been the focus of the military/intelligence community of US and her allies to find and stop attacks before they happen. This kind of preventive strategy is hard to maintain because some of these cells are entrenched in society as "normal" people in civilized countries. Often they are citizens of said country. Trying to take action preemptively is almost impossible without violating a bunch of rights. The whole debate about extraordinary rendition of suspected terrorists using military contractors such as blackwater are proof of that. With Bin Laden dying Al Qaeda become even more decentralized with a bunch of scattered cells, so there is no "cut off the head and the body dies" solution. I think in the future US and allies need to put more emphasis on human intelligence gathering and stop depending on electronic intelligence gathering so much. The terrorists understand the kind of technology that NSA(in the US) and GCHQ(in UK) possess. They have gone to not using cell phones or email but instead pass handwritten notes and word of mouth. They already did freeze a ton of bank accounts but like I mentioned earlier they dont move money through banks but use cash . Do a little reading on the hawala system of moving money. In the end I think military might and firepower are pretty useless without good intelligence. With these people going back to the older methods of communicating and avoiding electronic signals as much as they can more emphasis needs to be put on actual humans penetrating cells and gathering intel manually in the field. Collecting better intelligence is the only way forward in this situation. Military units cannot operate unless they know who to take out and where to get to them.Terrorists are easy to kill but hard to find. We got the killing part down its finding them thats going to be the challenge.
Ron Paul would be the solution. Leave em the hell alone they'll leave us the hell alone. We have enough trouble in our country to worry about those lunatics and yes they have an issue withour involvement, backing in literally every facet of the middle east. we need to get out, let them deal with their **** and we deal with ours. that'll be the long term solution for us and them. As far as knocking their backing....look no other than our friendly allies the Saudis, yep bush's good buddies. They were majority of the actual people on the plane, they were financed majorly by saudies who have a hand in almost the root of all extremist thought, oppresive views ,etc yea get a way with it some how
Doesn't matter what Islamists are doing here when American soldiers and weapons are back home. Unless you're under the false impression that terrorism started on 9/11 and the war on terror thereafter.
Where were the 9/11 terrorists ideologically influenced and trained? Several of them were in terror camps in your expanded region.
Terrorism has been around for ages, and only now is a country fighting it like some sort of war. It's like using a hammer to swat a fly. It waste too much energy and doesn't actually work either. Just like every other problem facing America, you devote the right amount of resources in the right places to minimize damage. Of course, given all the fear-mongering following 9/11, this will never happen again.
Yes and some in Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_cell What's your point? That they should bomb the places where they were trained? or just the places where you don't like the training they got? The crime is not the training, it's the murder. You go after the trainER for the training, not the trainEE. You can't bring an ideology to justice. Are they at war with the places where terrorists trained? Were there any terrorists in Iraq before the invasion, other than Saddam himself? What brought this massive group of ideologically-charged Arabs to Afghanistan? These crazed Islamists who you claim are likely to strengthen themselves for attack if left alone - just a decade or two ago - were shedding blood for America. Were being trained by America. Funny how that works, right? Seems there is something which makes them befriend America, but surely if America declared peace they would attack. But you don't care about all these inconvenient truths.
They were not trained in Germany. They were sleepers who abused the German social system and got to study at German universities for free and got German welfare benefits. Their ideological foundation and motivation was from your region and is called Islamism. The training is clearly a crime. Training someone to murder people is a crime. You think your fellow Islamists should get away with it and be left alone. Interesting. And yes, the root cause, the ideology behind it, needs to be attacked. It is the cancer. The suicide terrorists are just weapons used by the ideologists. Yes, there should be a war on the places where terrorists are trained. If someone willingly and knowingly provides a hideout and training ground for terrorists, then these hideouts and training grounds need to be destroyed and those who aid and abet need to be brought to justice. I see you don't like that and would rather let them operate freely. Your joint ideology, inferiority complex and hate. They were not shedding blood for America. Stop perpetuating that Al Qaeda myth. I know you are ideologically close to these people, but that doesn't mean you need to spread their lies here. They did attack. 9/11. They murdered many people in London, Madrid, all over the world, and they are still doing it. You would prefer that they could continue to do it and be left alone. I say the world needs to keep fighting terror and its underlying ideology.
As I said, you don't want to know the inconvenient truth, and you like to think or pretend terrorism started on 9/11. You can't even accept a basic fact of why the Arabs were in Afghanistan in the first place. When you are this petty, it says a lot about your position and you look like a fool to the majority of people who know exactly why they were there. It also makes discussion impossible if we deny these basic facts, so I don't understand why you even respond to me? If you have a solution to propose (other than sending people other than YOURSELF to die in these wars abroad), let's hear it in this thread. Unless you have something relevant to say about how to better fight terrorism, I have 0 interest.
