Can terrorism be defeated by a conventional military force?

[tk2kewl]

I know nothing of military strategy, but based on the history of guerilla forces versus military might, I don't see how a "war on terror" can be won in the way our feeble leader suggests.

All yes and no votes should be accompanied by an explanation to be truly meaningful IMO.

edit for spelling

[Goldmund]

1. Where's the "fuck no" option?

[rustedace]

2. Yes

if you use nuclear weapons

[Beaver Tail]

5. Terrorism cannot be defeated

with an army. It is a mindset that needs to be changed IMHO

[tk2kewl]

8. do you think that these conflicts are headed there?

i think that a nuke would certainly defeat the insurgency in iraq, but i do not believe it would end Islamic extremism

[Beaver Tail]

11. A Nuke would turn the tide in favour of USA in Iraq

At the cost of turning the whole world against you

[tk2kewl]

18. you don't have to convince me

even if the whole world was for it as an option you'd never convince me it was justified

[rustedace]

14. It would

if Shrub nuked the whole Earth and everyone in it.

You know he wants to.

[Goldmund]

13. LMAO

A joker, I like that.

:rofl:

[grumpy old fart]

15. dropped where, exactly?

[frictionlessO]

20. nevermind, it'll just get deleted... what a completely ill informed thing

to say....

:puke: :puke:

[IrateCitizen]

3. Terrorism is a tactic, not an "enemy"...

You can no more defeat terrorism than you can defeat basic infantry tactics as outlined in FM 7-8.

And the problem with defeating those who engage in terrorism via military means is that you end up only swelling their ranks in the process of fighting them.

[oblivious]

22. War on terrorism, drugs, poverty, crime. Nuke em all.

[fryguy]

4. Ism's can't be "defeated"

Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in The Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus and I'd still have to bum rides off of people.

[Warpy]

6. Terrorism requires international cooperation

and meticulous police work.

This bunch just wants to see things go "bang."

[Chan790]

7. No

No foreign invading power unfamiliar with the climate and territory has ever succeeded against an entrenched guerilla force in the long-term. If you don't crush it immediately(within a few months), the best you can do is stalemate. More often you go running with your tail between your knees.

[SomewhereOutThere424]

9. No, because

Terrorism isn't even a real expression anymore. It was brought back from the dead as a new appealing scare word. Crime is terrorism, and our crime rates have always been high (lower with democratic presidents though). The vikings were terrorists, and even in those times it has escalated. The romans were terrorists, taking everything over for themselves, killing innocent people and animals to shatter morale.

If you go out and hunt a deer, shooting it once to make it feel pain and fear, and then killing it, it's terrorism. All terrorism is (or used to be) was the act of violently asserting terror to gain a goal, a thrill, or an audience. If you're asking if we can defeat al-queda with military force, I believe we can, but I believe it would be more influential to do it in a way that we don't breed more terrorists (aka getting high tailed out of iraq).

Terrorism in essence is a thrill all human beings have. However, not everyone asserts it in a diabolical way. It's just now they'd gone and alerted stupid people that it's a temptation everyone has (look at the game grand theft auto, tell me it was created because people DON'T want to cause terror), they're terrified of everything and are more suseptable to propoganda than ever before.

Terror is an essence, an emotion, a force. Terrorism are those who use that force in any every day activity in a forceful way to gain a reaction. It's just a brainwashing term so that someone doesn't sympathize with joe schmo from baghdad who was suicideal because he lost his family to a US bomb, went out with a gun and started shooting people up.

I for one don't sympathize with people who do terrible acts. I do sympathize that no one is inherently evil, but terrorism is a term cooked up to make people inherently evil.

[DinahMoeHum]

10. No. Terrorism by itself is a means to an end.

When most people think terrorist, they mean either "criminals" or "guerillas". Of course, there's that old argument that one person's "terrorist" is another's "freedom fighter"

Guerrillas: flexible, "think outside the box", "hit 'em where they're weakest". They don't have to "win", they just have to harass and outwait and outlast their occupiers.

Conventional: fixed targets, set piece battles, "find 'em, fix 'em, fight 'em and finish 'em". Must have a fixed definition of victory.

For further explanations, I suggest you read Sun Tzu "The Art of War"

:nuke:


There's also the question of what constitutes terrorism. Someone once suggested that war is terrorism as practiced by the powerful, while terrorism is war as practiced by the powerless. I also saw a sticker the other day that said "War is terrorism with a bigger budget".

:nuke:

[DinahMoeHum]

12. (sorry, repeat)

n/t

[Solly Mack]

16. No. It feeds upon itself ("terrorism")

it does this by creating more "terrorists" for every "terrorists" destroyed.

Also, Bush said once that we have to make them too afraid to bother with America...or words to that effect...well, hello? That IS terrorism. To cause fear and to control by fear. So essentially, America is fighting terrorism (so they claim) with terrorism (torture is terrorism as well)....

[anarch]

17. a tactic cannot be defeated...

but I think the question really is, "can a guerrilla insurgency be defeated by conventional military force", and the answer is still no.

I feel compelled to quote a science fiction writer, Iain M. Banks, totally out of context:

there is a "peculiar dialectic of dissent which - simply stated - dictates that in all but the most dedicatedly repressive hegemonies, if in a sizable population there are one hundred rebels, all of whom are then rounded up and killed, the number of rebels present at the end of the day is not zero, and not even one hundred, but two hundred or three hundred or more; an equation based on human nature which seems often to baffle the military and political mind."

[tk2kewl]

19. i like that quote

but what baffles my mind is that the military and political minds are baffled by that reality.

[indepat]

21. How do you defeat an abstract noun, a nebulous, ubiquitous abstract

concept needed to replace the Commies as the new ubiquitous bogeyman: terrorists and terrorism have been around since the dawn of man and will be at the end of man IMHO.