but how many people understand that this is what the "War on Terror" is about?
That's a bit hard to answer, because the definition of "War on Terror" seems to change. I think the most accurate definition of the WoT is "terrorists are whoever we say they are."
I think the WoT
should be about hunting down the Wahabbi sect and destroying them. Ideally, I'd like to see systematical destruction of its infrastructure, discreditting its ideals and turning everyone against said ideals.
do you understand that if "we" .... "win" ... the "War on Terror" .... that we are essentially making impossible the exact situation described in UC?
that is why the patriot act and the extra fbi powers, and the spying on citizens, and sneek and peeks, and everything else bush is doing is all oriented towards discovering the Henry Bowmans before they can stir up sympathy and gain critical mass?
And what if the WoT was never meant to be 'won'? Terrorism is a tactic of warfare. It's akin to declaring war on a flanking movement, or a pincer maneuver. (Yes, I vastly oversimplify and remove all ethics/morality from the analogy.) Terrorism is a concept, not a tangable object.
Again, this is why I believe that we should be focusing more on the Wahabbis. It is fundimentally impossible to stamp out "terrorism", for the reasons I just meantioned. You can only search out and punish those that commit it. You can try to secure sensitive positions. You can't stop people from making explosives, building homemade rifles, toxins, poisons, etc no matter how many restrictions any government puts together.
In UC, notice that almost none of the politicians Bowman executed were killed with a firearm. Drugs, kitchen knife, pickup truck, etc. It is impossible to ban such objects, just as it is impossible to ban a way of thinking. That's what guerilla warfare is, moreso than anything else. It is an attitude and a way of thinking. The tools of the trade can vastly vary. The VC were very successful with armed hit and runs as well as improvised explosives, the Iranians took hostages and funded outside groups, etc etc.
it's quite a peculiar conundrum... damned if you do, damned if you don't. either we keep our Freedoms and play whack-a-mole with the muslims, or we give in to the inevitable systemmatic oppression of big government for a chance of "safety".
No it's not. We can grind the Wahabbis into the ground, and salt the earth in which they are buried. We can remove their feeder system and dismantle their support infrastructure. We can make it clear that we are after a very specific group of individuals that kill more Muslims than they do Americans.
Turing this war into a war against a specific ethnic group or religion dooms it to bloody and costly failure.
We need not allow the destruction of our freedoms to accomplish this either. To believe so buys into the theory that the only possible choices are death or slavery. Those two options are NOT the only possible choices, unless you lock your brain into thinking they are. By doing so, you've already lost.
