I’m sitting here watching Ferrari show that they’re still just a step ahead and that we’ll wait a little longer to see someone new come up. Something always happens to break ones domination.
We talk or argue about what’s right or wrong with the way we’re pursuing this “War on Terror”, but how do you define winning? Does anyone really believe there’s a military solution? Do you re-define what winning is? Do we re-define what “Our way of life” means? How’s it going in Israel – is this any different? Can it end until we understand where they’re coming from? Who’s their next big target – China?
My only solution is a spiritual one, and we don’t need to go there – again. What do you think? This isn’t like a war with a defeatable nation populated by people looking to an end of hostilities. This is a growing, changing thing between two cultures that are driven by an absolute belief in their righteousness. We seem to think this started with 9/11, but that was just the point that we were forced to face what had been going on for a long time already.

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"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Marcus Aurelius

You can't win a war in which you can't distinguish between the enemy (soldiers) and the innocent (civilians). I don't think its ever been done in human history without wiping out everybody.
The only way a war like this will stop is if there is a shift in ideology by one or both of the parties and thats easier said than done.

Exterminate them.

I'm not joking, massive retaliation. If you identify a suicide bomber his entire family should just disapear. You may not like your life, may think you are going to sacrifice it for some higher cause, but even terrorist love their mothers.

And I would level a mosque, like Medina maybe. and make it clear, next time, it's Mecca. Wanna make it a Holy War, we'll take the holy out of it.

Can't eliminate a method of conflict, just the participants. Frankly, aren't we just continuing the results of "The Crusades"?

The idea of war with out end as a means of keeping a population docile and fearful so it would follow its government like sheep was first publically dessiminated in Orwell's "1984". It's philosophical basis comes from the writings of Adolf Hitler. It was the mainstay of Hitler's Nazi social theory. Nazi society was organized around the idea of "kampf" or "struggle". War was endless, and all in society must participate. Wars existed within the society, and outside of it were external enemies as well. Leaders must have total power to wage war internally in society until all internal enemies (Jews, Communists, Gays, non-German racial groups) were eliminated, and all external enemies were defeated, even if it took 1,000 years. Everyone in society was assigned a particular "struggle" as part of the definition of their lives, a life consuming task that helped the overall struggle of the Gernan people against its enemies as directed by its Fueher which is the German word for "guide". The Fueher's struggle against Jewry and Communism was described in Hitler's book, "Mein Kampf" which translate to "My Struggle"-in fact he is defining his own societal "kamf" role. Hitler's evil propaganda genius, Goebbels, realized what Hitler had developed was also one of the most powerful propaganda tools ever devised. A person given a life task defined as part of a struggle to protect his family and country will become fanatical in its pursuit. A poplulation that can be convinced it is in a constant life or death struggle against internal and external enemies can be manipulated to act in ways desired by the government, whether the struggle is true or not. The trick for the propagandist was to make it look true when it wasn't. Goebbels was a pioneer in the techniques for achieving this, and his techniques are so affective they are studied in colleges and universities to this day. His method of twisting any truth or half-truth into something that looked like only one conclusion could be drawn from it is now called "spin". He also created fake news events to make his enemy appear to be agressive when it wasn't, and made claims of that threats existed from weak powerless countries like Poland, and used those trumped up threats as pretext for invasion. In fact, for most of WWII, the German people actually believed the Poles had attacked them.

Goebbels initial huge propaganda windfall came a 9/11-like event in 1933, the Reichstag fire. The event gave the Nazis the tool it needed to propel the German people to adopt the Nazi social theories and to give them complewte power to wage the national struggle::
http://worldatwar.net/event/reichstagsbrand/

Many people think Orwell's book predicted a coming communist state. In actuality it was Orwell's prediction of the ultimate fascist state, and was his interpretation of what a future society, built on the ideas of Hitler, would look like. People in this country need to ask themselves some pretty serious questions. A multi-national corporation, though the soft, fuzzy version, is a fascist entity. After the last election, they are the people in charge of this country. We are getting the Madison Avenue version of Goebel's techiques, brought to you by your local Republican party.

Geesh, lay off the pipe! Your paranoid ramblings are just that. We are in a war for the salvation of western culture, nothing more, nothing less. Religious zealots have declared war on our entire way of life.

Yes - With the non-Moslem world or non-Moslem opponents, there can be only one solution - a cease fire until Moslems can gain more power. It is an eternal war until the end of days. Peace can only come if the Islamic side wins. The two civilizations can only have periods of cease-fires. And this idea of cease-fire is based on a very important historical precedent, which, incidentally, Yasser Arafat referred to when he spoke in Johannesburg after he signed the Oslo agreement with Israel.
Whatever the prophet is supposed have done becomes a precedent. What Arafat said was, "Remember the story of Hudaybiya." The prophet had made an agreement there with the tribe of Kuraish for 10 years. But then he trained 10,000 soldiers and within two years marched on their city of Mecca.
The terrorists come from the most fundamental of the four schools of Islam called Hanbali, mainly coming out of Saudi Arabia. They don’t even try to interpret the Koran, but take it literally. Like our own fundamentalist Christians only seem to take literally those parts of the Bible that fit their own prejudices or practice, not everything, so it is with these terrorists.
There are various perspectives in Islam with different interpretations over the centuries. There were good people that were very enlightened in Islam that tried to understand things differently. They even brought traditions from the mouth of the prophet that women and children should not be killed in war.These more liberal streams do exist, but there is one thing that is very important for us to remember. The Hanbali school of law is extremely strict, and today this is the school that is behind most of the terrorist powers. Even if we talk about the existence of other schools of Islamic law, when we're talking about fighting against the Jews, or fighting against the Christian world led by America, it is the Hanbali school of law that is being followed. To the terrorists, because the western civilization is so driven by materialism, it is not only been seen as a religious opponent, but as a dam stopping Islam from achieving the final goal for which it was created.
Islam was created to be the army of God, the army of Allah. Every single Moslem is a soldier in this army. Every single Moslem that dies in fighting for the spread of Islam is a shaheed (martyr) no matter how he dies, because this is an eternal war between the two civilizations. It's not a war that stops. This was is there because it was created by Allah. Islam must be the ruler. Not that much different than what many fundamentalist Christians feel.
If we just exterminate the Hanbali’s it would be like them just exterminating the Baptists and Pentecostals, or did “koop” mean 25% of the world’s population? Might not be the answer. Still in the Sudan that’s what they’re up too – why aren’t we talking about that and just Iraq?

__________________
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"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Marcus Aurelius

I'm with Koop. Make it clear that the next islamic terrorist attack against the United States will result in Mecca being turned to glass. That should give 'em something to think about.

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What does that have to do with our decision to invade Iraq?

"War for salvation of western culture". Yeah, I'm the one on the crack pipe. So we will have hordes of Arabs on the streets of Houston, enforcing the Shira on the masses. Get a grip. Religous zealots have always been a problem, so has terrorism. Your a walking example of the kind of fanaticism that results from being propagandized with the techniques as outlined above.

And while I'm with you on the knee jerk reaction to bomb the whole place what happens when you bomb Mecca is that you increase the size of Al-Queda x Ten Million. That is what they want! Play chess and think 5 moves down the board.
The Chinese believed in wiping out 7 generation's of your enemies family to eliminate any retribution.
I'm in favor of dropping in Special Forces that can "arrange" for the disappearance of the hate mongers that indoctrinate the children, leaders complicit with the terrorists and anyone that supports them.
The way to defeat the terrorists is patience and by making them appear to be the bad guys to the people likely to follow them.

Exactly. What you are seeing is a resurgence of fascism all over the world. Fundmentalist Islam and German Nazism are almost identical concepts. The Islamic concept of "jihad" is almost identical to the nazi concept of "kampf", so also is the theory of endless war the same, anti-Semitism, and a lot of other components. The stupidist thing we can do is become more like them. We are not only playing into their hands, we also losing the abilitiy to be a power of example of freedom and peaceful democracy.

Jefferson wanted America's foreign policy to forever be "the gloved hand over the mailed fist". Both he and Washington warned the generations to avoid wars of conquest and foriegn entanglement. Bush should have listened. What we should be doing is treating the people of these countries with respect and fairness, while at the same time designing our military forces so they can act against the more radical elements when needed. Instead of wars of occupation, we should simply define a provable threat and use our armies to totally smash the threat, and then get the hell out. If it is a situation that requires occupation, it should only be done through the United Nations, so the world, not the Americans, is seen as the occupying power in the eyes of those being occupied. Iraq was not a provable threat, and the UN did not feel compelled to act against them at the time, so they should have been left alone. Afganistan, on the other hand was a provable threat, and we acted correctly. In fact, if Bush had simply sent the army into Bagdad, smashed Hussein and walked out, I doubt if by now anyone would care. Its the fascist style disinformation, the endless-1984-war-is-peace arguments and the Hitler-style invasion and occupation that has made this a disaster.

it would also help if instead of carrying out Hitler-style invasions and occupations, proving we are what the Wahhabists say we are, we instead cleaned up our own backyard there first. Remember "freeing" Kuwait? What a bunch of propaganda bull$hit. They have one of the most repressive dictatorships on the planet. Our "ally" Saudi Arabia? All the oil wealth we send them every day doesn't even reach the common people, many who live in slums and can't find a job, as the Saud family rips off every dime. The Israelis? They haven't complied with UN resolutions in 40 years and we're not invading them. We keep paying for the same mistakes. We lost Iran because we installed an unelected dictator who called himself a "shah", who used brutal police state tactics to control the country. When he got kicked out, so did we, and we got kicked out by their version of bin Laden. Iraq, once it is stablized enough to get the oil flowing, will become just like Kuwait, we "freed it" and after the oil starts pumping, we don't give a $hit who takes over. Sooner or later the populations of these countries are going to do the same thing the Iranians did.

We might consider how terrorism elsewhere has been slowed, almost stopped. Take Ireland--it is much more peaceful there now than 20, 30, 40 years ago. Was military force the answer? No, it took a hashing out by negotiators from both sides, acknowledgment that there was wrong on both sides, a willingness to compromise, and outside diplomatic help.

A perfect parallel to Al Quaeda? Of course not, but the positions were very entrenched, and the history very long and nasty. And of course, there was a religious component. Somehow, someone convinced leaders from both sides that endless slaughter would not triumph over anything.

Joe B.

Why should we respect and be fair to these people? After the beheading of Paul Johnson I would take 5 - 10 Al Qaeda prisoners and hang them in the public square in downtown Baghdad. We would be fair by giving them a speedy trial before the execution. If any more American civilians are killed I would repeat the hangings, but increase the number until they get the message.

The problem is that they don't respect us.

There is plenty of evidence between Iraq under Sadaam and Al Qaeda. We have records of financial transactions between them. The media disinformation machine will not tell you that. They are too busy with their agenda.

The UN is full of currupt dictators that continued to do business with Iraq after the restrictions were put on them.

Although was is not peace, lasting peace has followed most wars.

Perhaps you could show us some of this evidence. People claiming they have evidence like this are comman as chicken****, Actual evidence seems to be as elusive as the Holy Grail. Wake up man, the War in Iraq is a sucker's war - it had nothing to do with terrorism. I'm all in favor of hunting al_queda to the last man, but the Iraq war only made things worse. It's always been about oil, and the terrorist tie-in has always been a suckers game.