General Black Jack Pershing gave a pretty convincing argument.
Just before WW1 there were a number of terrorist attacks on US forces in the Phillipines by Muslim extremists. General Pershing captured 50 terrorists and tied them to posts for execution. He then had his men bring in two pigs and slaughtered them in front of the now horrified terrorists. Muslims detest pork because they believe them to be filthy animals. To them, eating or touching a pig, its meat, its blood etc. is to be immediately and irrevocably barred from paradise (and those virgins) and doomed to hell. The soldiers then soaked their bullets in the blood and executed 49 of the terrorists. The soldiers then dug a big hole, dumped the bodies in and covered them with the left over pig parts, blood, entrails etc. They let the 50th man go. For the next 42 years, there was not a single Muslim extremist attack anywhere in the world.
2006-07-20 11:28:28
·
answer #1
·
answered by awakening1us 3
·
8⤊
5⤋
Eradicate the source. If an ideology creates a person who would die to defeat you, destroy the ideology. You do this by attacking the leaders of the ideology, by counter-propaganda, and by being feared. Let me repeat this last: you must be feared, not loved. See Machiavelli for this.
If a people fears you enough, they will not join with leaders and ideologies that will risk your wrath. A leader / ideology draws support from the people. When those people turn away in fear, when the leaders themselves are hunted and hiding, when their support networks are destroyed, they are defeated. Without leaders and idealogues, no new fanatics are created, and without those, a cause dies and peace can return.
The stupidest thing the United States ever did in the war on terror was to respect mosques. Any mosque that taught hatred and violence should have been bulldozed. Let the masses see their clerics as weak as they stand amidst rubble and this would have ended a long time ago.
And, yes, the world media would have had a field day with that - so be it. We weren't wearing a white hat with a doctrine of pre-emptive strike anyway. Might as well be the bad guy and get it done. And if we're too weak-willed to be the bad guy occasionally, then we shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place. Instead, we empowered the extremist clerics by showing that we were unwilling to harm them, unwilling to damage their buildings, and unwilling to disrespect the Koran. As Saddam's government fell, what was the one place that was safe? A mosque. Where extremists already congregated. How can anyone be surprised at the resulting radicalization of large numbers of people? Was there no government analysis at all of the consequences of this sort of action? Truly?
In all honesty, we didn't create this atmosphere of hate, but our actions certainly exacerbated it. What was the largest untouched institution in Iraqi life? Islam. Why are we surprised that many turned to fundamentalist Islam then? Foolish and short-sighted if we didn't see where this was going.
2006-07-20 17:02:04
·
answer #2
·
answered by OccumsRevelation 2
·
0⤊
0⤋
You first need to realize that a country that is in desperation will distort a person’s judgment. Just look at Germany just before World War II, their economy was in ruins and things were rapidly getting worse. A large percent of the German population took to Hitler’s message because he offered to them a ray of hope. Granted it was a sick hope but hope nonetheless.
Now lets jump ahead to September the 11th and the destruction of the World Trade Center. Nineteen men who felt they had nothing to loose caused the death of over 3000 people. One of the similarities between the two is the desperation of the people and the desperation of their situations. It’s apparent that countries that are in chaos will tend to breed people whose lives only know chaos and instability. As a result their suffering eventually will become someone else’s suffering, after all like the saying goes ‘misery loves company’.
What needs to be done is we need to watch out for conditions of instability where an act of charity could provide relief to a given situation. This is not something that we’re very good at because we often demand far more than a set country might be able to give at the time. In Afghanistan for instance we helped out the people there by giving their military specialized training when something more neutral and beneficial to the Afghani’s might have been in order like providing food and infrastructure assistance as well as protection via UN peacekeeper forces. Instead Afghanistan’s political structure crumbled and our actions only turned around to bite us in the butt in the form of Osama Bin Laden.
What I’m trying to describe here is a form of passive warfare, where we actually spend the same manpower and financial resources, although probably far less firepower, producing far fewer casualties. This is because we’re not trying to destroy an embedded enemy as much as reconditioning a people to think clearly and helping them to develop a sound political infrastructure that allows them to become an empowered nation unto themselves. Means of doing this would include re-schooling or education, agricultural assistance, medical aid and some form of police force which we would provide. This is similar to that of the Peace Corp but on a larger and slightly more aggressive scale, because time would truly be of the essence.
2006-07-20 19:08:11
·
answer #3
·
answered by Augustus-Illuminati 3
·
0⤊
0⤋
Remove the hatred.
Find a way to calm them down, find common ground on which peace can be built. Build a relationship with their people that's based on trust, however tenuous.
We're the world's largest superpower. We are in the best position to petition for peace on this planet. A benevolent superpower is more secure than a violent one.
It absolutely sickens me to see so many answers of, "Kill them first". Don't you even understand that it is this attitude that got us into this conflict to begin with?
These mistakes that you've made,
you'll just make them again.
If you'd only try turning around...
2006-07-20 16:52:04
·
answer #4
·
answered by l00kiehereu 4
·
0⤊
0⤋
The obvious answer is to kill them off to the last man. The hidden answer would be to first give them a cause that they would much rather die for. Both are long and difficult paths, the latter more rewarding, the former more thorough
2006-07-20 17:18:05
·
answer #5
·
answered by Anonymous
·
0⤊
0⤋
The simplest answer tends to be the correct one...this is a tough one, since I have no means of obtaining a weapon of world destruction, I was thinking of breaking the law of gravity and creating a black hole not even light can escape.
So I try to make the best of it, hoping potatoe throwing flies get that I aint going to help them without the wage of sin per body. Hey look what I got, a pinky finger and the ability to think apart from the others...actually they say they want their middle finger back, after eating from the tree of knowledge to find out what comes after ten. (Statues with no arms) well the answer is not eleventeen, thats for sure hahaha. Hard to see the light without five fingers, pinky out when it doubt...sounds crazy hahaha.
2006-07-20 16:54:25
·
answer #6
·
answered by Brucie 3
·
0⤊
0⤋
The French and the Americans, didn't win. The enemy would have found the very same problem if England had been invaded.
2006-07-20 16:44:36
·
answer #7
·
answered by Anonymous
·
0⤊
0⤋
Find out why u became enemies in the first place..u r their enemy as much as they r ur enemy..they r willing to die for their cause and u too r willing to die for ur cause..so it's the same..i guess it's just how it is..no one can win,,there'll never be peace!
2006-07-20 17:17:52
·
answer #8
·
answered by cutie 1
·
0⤊
0⤋
it's like judo. we should put our efforts into finding ways to prevent them from hurting us and our structures if they are so intent on destruction.
preventing them will always be sticky, because the planning stages of terrorism look to me like regular old bitching about the government. that should always be completely legal. so, rather than figure out which of the nutballs is actually serious... let's wait for them to come at us and figure out a way to let them just run into the wall rather than us.
does this metaphor make any sense to anyone besides me? it's like tornados... you can't make a structure that survives, so you just make sure everyone has a basement to hide in. you take reasonable steps for safety without panicking.
2006-07-20 16:56:53
·
answer #9
·
answered by uncle osbert 4
·
0⤊
0⤋
Their cause, there it is a cause.
Vietnam it was communism against democracy.
WWII it was Hitler and jJapan wanting to take over the USA
Why are the terriorists blowing up people?
what is the cause, they are prepared to die for?
2006-07-20 17:11:09
·
answer #10
·
answered by Anonymous
·
0⤊
0⤋
They want to die for their cause and I was willing to arrange for that to happen.
To paraphrase Patton: You do not win a war by dying for your country. You win the war by making the other guy die for his country.
2006-07-20 17:22:04
·
answer #11
·
answered by MikeGolf 7
·
0⤊
0⤋