Fight smarter, not harder

[Mythsaje]

or "How to win the War On Terror."

First--realize that large armies and amassed soldiers work well when fighting an enemy that is trying to hold territory, but not so well when all the enemy wants is to prevent THEM from holding territory. Conventional strategies and tactics don't work so well against Guerilla fighters. That is why we lost in Vietnam, why the Soviets lost in Afghanistan, and why we're losing in Iraq. If they don't need to hold territory, they cannot be pinned there.

Second--Terrorists are not soldiers. They do not have a handbook, they do not ascribe to the Geneva conventions. We do not gain anything by allowing them to force us to abandon these ideals. They are criminals and it justifies what they do if we resort to criminal methods to fight them. It simply gives them more tools with which to recruit others to their ranks.

Third--By acting without thought, without consideration of the damage we may do to civilians in our attempt to fight them, we create a sympathetic population for them to blend into. They can say "see, it is THAT evil that we fight, and why we do what we do." Humans have a tendency to root for the underdog, for whatever reason. If they are fighting what many perceive as a monolithic enemy, and appear to gain ground, they become heroes to some, especially if we act as callous as they do.

Fourth--The only methods that have been used to combat terrorism effectively in the past have been law enforcement methods. Tracking, capturing, trying, and punishing the offenders. Killing a hundred civilians to eliminate one terrorist breeds more terrorists, for the survivors end up wanting revenge. Israel has used force to counter terrorists acts against them, and have not, even in as many years as they've done it, even made a dent in the amount of attacks thrown at them. It waxes and wanes, but this is as easily attributed to political influences as the application of force on Israel's part.

Fifth--Even if Iraq, Iran, and/or Syria WERE and ARE providing aid and comfort to terrorists, attacking them through conventional means has the side-effect of killing thousands, if not millions, of people who are simply trying to live their own lives the best they can. Using the murderous actions of a few who may be hiding among them to justify murderous actions of our own makes us no better than they are.

In the end the only things that will help fight terrorism is a recognition of our inability to deal with it through military intervention. Reasonable security measures, cooperative intelligence networks, competent law enforcement operations, and, where necessary, mobile and agile elite military units can, together, succeed where large-scale operations cannot.

And THAT is the lesson we should be taking out of the continuing Misadventures of Sheriff Bush and Deputy Cheney. They have killed perhaps as many as 100,000 innocent people in order to kill or capture a handful of bad guys.

That's not success. That's simply cruel and stupid.