strategy

I feel that I should probably write a bit more about my thoughts on the whole war on terror debacle. The usual defense against the sort of thing I've said is to reassert that the terrorists are still a threat and to suggest that people like me are advocating ignoring them.

It didn't take long after the attacks of September 11th for the blowhards to start giving their speeches. The message was that the architects of the attacks had a problem with everything good about the USA, and somehow that they thought that a single suicide attack would just make us surrender.

Assuming that Osama bin Laden was indeed the master architect of the attacks (if you follow foreign news reports you'll see that they always say that the US believes he was behind them, which makes it seem like the rest of the world isn't as convinced), then say what you will about him but you have to give him credit for being a master strategist. There's no virtue in ritualistically discrediting your enemies.
I don't believe that someone with that firm a grasp of strategy would believe that such an attack would simply cause the country to give up. And I'm not sure that he would have gone to all that trouble to just kill a bunch of people. He is trying to change the world.
From the very beginning I said that the attacks were an attempt to elicit a response. Basically a trap. While all our would be "brave leaders" were on television giving their bold speeches promising equally violent responses to the violence that had just been done to us, while everyone was chanting "we will never forget".. I was telling everyone I could that we were falling into a trap. A path had been planned for us by the enemy and we were heading straight down it.
But no. Everyone knew better. The situation called for knee jerk reactionism only. The only thing left was go out and kill a bunch of people. That would make everything better.

Well we're coming up on six years after the event. We've brought two countries to chaos, stretched our military to the breaking point, sent our own country plummeting into debt, and ruined our standing in the global community.
We should have been working to moderate the anger in the Islamic community. Instead we've fed it. We've given power to the fundamentalist leaders who seek to spread their absolute law and enforce their narrow view of their religion on the rest of the world.
The Pentagon and even George Bush himself have had to admit that our actions have resulted in terrorist organizations gaining power. Yet not even the fact that our "war on terror" has ultimately benefited those we're supposed to be fighting has made a difference in the course we're pursuing.

There are, roughly speaking, two problems here. Number one, that a computer geek such as myself has a better handle on the subtleties of global military tactics and diplomacy than the current occupants of the executive branch of our government. And believe me I'm not claiming to be a tactical genius. I'm calling them incompetent hacks who have no real concern for the consequences of their own actions.
Then number two there's the fact that, despite the immediate historical record showing that our actions have achieved results exactly opposite to what they were supposed to do, we're continuing to do the same thing because the people who lead us down this path are still in charge and are attempting to remedy the situation by continuing to do the same thing that got us here in the first place.

The solution to the Iraq quagmire is not an easy thing to find. I have no easy solutions. But the correct approach to the threat of terrorism is simple. This is not a conflict that can be solved by bombs and bullets. Certainly we should be on guard for further attacks, although we're more than capable of doing that without dismantling the bill of rights in the process. The answer is to work to promote peace and stability in the Middle East. Okay so that's not simple. But the basic concept is. It's a slow, unglamorous process of diplomacy.
The extremists feed on violence and conflict. The solution is to work for peace and stability. Defuse the rage and you take away their power. But before we set out on that path we need leaders who are capable of the subtlety and patience that that approach would require.

The deciding point will be the next presidential elections. If we elect someone who talks the talk of the war on terror then we will be turning away from any chance of a positive outcome. I don't have an adequate understanding of the full situation to know how much worse things will have to get before it happens, but sooner or later I fear that a true global conflict will begin if things continue unchanged. Religious fervor is reaching a fever pitch for both the Islamic and Christian fundamentalists, we're entering another oil crisis, and a number of hostile dictatorships either have or are in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons.


It's going to take a bit more than a "mission accomplished" sign to get us out of this one.