An effective "War on Terror" is like effective pest control:

[MercutioATC]

1) You can try to eradicate every ant in your neighborhood. You'll spend a lot of money and, while you'll make a sizeable dent in the local ant population, many will be left.

2) You can deal with ants as they directly affect your life (in your home). You spray around the perimeter of the house and put down a few ant traps inside.

Either way, you'll occasionally get an ant in the house. You can never get them all, but you can reduce them to a "nusiance" level by dealing with them as they attempt to enter your house. Trying to kill them all out in the neighborhood makes little difference if you don't protect your house.

Hmm...where have I heard the goal of "nuisance level" applied to terrorism before?



Thoughts?

[O.M.B.inOhio]

1. Or you could examine your practices inside: what it attracting the ants?

[ghostsofgiants]

2. We have a winner

[MercutioATC]

3. An excellent point!

This analogy keeps getting better. Thanks!

[KaliTracy]

4. surely the "bugman" would understand this analogy... unless he wasn't

really an exterminator....

[tenshi816]

5. I could never understand why

the Republicans got so upset about Kerry putting it that way. I mean, seems to me they should really like the idea of terrorism being reduced to a "nuisance level" because then people wouldn't be so afraid.

Oh, wait, never mind, what was I thinking? Lost my head for a minute there.

It's gotta be all terra, all the time, 'cause it gives Jr. something to do when he's not out dismantling Social Security.

[MercutioATC]

7. Americans (in general) seem to want a simple, all-inclusive solution.

We want it all, but we don't want to have to pay for it.

Combined with an unrealistic need for absolute solutions, it's a dangerous mis (as we've seen).

The worst thing is that it doesn't work that way.

[CJCRANE]

8. Even Condoleeza Rice

said they were tired of "swatting at flies"...and just by lucky coincidence 9/11 happens to give them an excuse to stir up a whole new hornet's nest (so they don't have to swat at flies anymore).

[Freedomfried]

6. I'd say more like weed control in the garden

remove them by the roots, lovingly treat and care for the rest of the garden, keeping vigilant for any sign of new "weeds" sprouting.

When you see another weed starting to grow stop what you're doing and go remove them by the root again.

If you run weeds over with a lawnmower, you've not removed them, you've just spread their seeds over a larger area.

[MercutioATC]

9. "remove them by the roots" sounds too much like what we're doing...

That seems to be what Bush is ostensibly trying to do...incompetently, of course. I do like the lawnmower analogy, however.

[Freedomfried]

10. But this is more what I see:

This administrations actions are more like a guy getting stung by a wasp, he saw it was a wasp as it flew away unharmed , so he walks behind somebody elses house, to a honeybee hive and shoves his leg into it up to his ass.

Than he claims he there because he's "protecting the world from stinging insects"

While he's stealing the honey.

[MercutioATC]

11. Funny how there are so many appropriate analogies and nobody sees it.

I believe that this administration only looks at short-term gain (for them, personally). That explains a lot of their actions.

What I don't understand is why the American people buy it.

[Inland]

12. So what's the analogy for what Bush did?

Bombing a house across the street because it might have its own ants?

[MercutioATC]

13. The house across the street didn't have ants, but they might have been

concealing an ant farm somewhere...

(turns out they weren't)

[ICantBelieve]

15. To draw his ants over...

I thought he was bombing the house across the street to draw his ants over there.

I agree with the nuisance level theory, although I like to just put it in terms of risk. The word nuisance is a bit offensive. Nuisances don't typically kill people, so it's a bad word to use.

We live with risks every day. We get into cars. We fly in airplanes. We buy hot coffee from McDonald's. We smoke. We drink. We have genetics we have no control over. If it were even possible to eliminate all risk, we would still choose not to, and, in fact, we choose not to every day. Eliminating all risk would make our lives unliveable.

We try our best to find ways to reduce risks in ways that don't bother us and then, after that, all we can do is balance reducing the risk vs. making our lives difficult.

And, alas, that's what terrorism is. It's a risk. We might get killed by a terrorist attack. But, more likely, we'll die in a car accident. Or of a heart attack or cancer.

By looking at it this way, we can remove the "terror" from terrorist. It's another risk that must be minimized. I truly believe this is the difference between the USA's reaction and the Brits reaction. The Brits see it as a risk. They work to minimize it. They do not fear terrorism. Americans, encouraged by Bush's form of "leadership," fear terrorism. A real leader would point out the level of risk. A real leader would explain it as a risk. A real leader wouldn't USE it to feed a frenzy of hate. But we don't have a real leader in charge...

[MercutioATC]

16. You're right, "risk" is a much better way to frame the issue.

We're conditioned to accept risk every day. We need to show that "terrorism" is just another risk in modern society. We can't eliminate it, but we can minimize it. It's nothing to be terrorized by.

[undeterred]

14. We're not gonna tolerate anyone who harbors ants n/t

[beboplives]

17. That's a Great Analogy .More People Need to Realize

that terrorism IS NOT an ideology. It is a methodology. You simply can't, unless you are some naive, sloganeering windbag, truly believe that sending a few divisions to Iraq will suck in every terrorist on the planet. The fight them over there, so we don't fight them here argument rings more hollow by the month.

Mounting a real war on poverty would do much to put a dent in the thought process of those who could be recruited to this sick methodology.

I alluded to this in a post titled The War on Terror in general discussion.

[CJCRANE]

18. I heard a Condi Rice interview

on the radio this morning (UK BBC Radio 4) and the way she speaks, it's as though terrorists are a race of people who live in the Middle East, that they are finite in number and that they can be wiped out.

on edit: or that their ideology can be replaced with a different ideology (i.e. "freedumb").

[joeblow]

19. ants

however if you get the whole neighborhood involved and educated on how to deal with the ants they will be no more.....

[MercutioATC]

21. There will ALWAYS be ants...

always.

[dogday]

20. It's like trying to spray for roaches in an Apartment Complex

you can spray one apartment and they run to another, spray that one, they run to another, and they just keep meeting up with other roaches as they go....