The War on Terror is now over 14 years old if you start it from 9-11. The USA had troops in Afghanistan and Iraq for many years and both those countries are still far from peaceful. There are substantial terrorist activities in North Africa, the horn of Africa, Nigeria, the Arabian peninsula, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and -- to a lesser extent-- Europe and the USA. The simple truth is that we are not winning this war. Our approach has been to fight localized outcroppings of terrorist groups, but not to really fight the basis for those groups. Battling al Qaeda in Iraq forced its members to leave or go underground. When president Obama pulled out all the American troops, the terrorists regrouped as ISIS and came right back. Since the new Iraqi government was controlled by Shiites and stopped any support for the non-terrorist Sunni leaders, conditions were ripe for another Sunni terrorist uprising. The ISIS ideology of death and destruction for non-believers (basically everyone who is not ISIS) draws in a large number of religious Moslems who see the world in the same apocalyptic terms as ISIS does. Our main plan to combat the spread of the ideology has been based upon the assumption by the Obama Administration that there is something that the USA and the rest of the West has done which causes the anger of the terrorists. President Obama and his people spend a great deal of time trying to explain that we are not opposed to all Moslems and how the terrorists don't represent Islam. Of course, the first part of that is true while the second part is obviously false. No amount of statements and speeches by American leaders can change the fact that the terrorists base their entire movement upon one interpretation of Islam. Just as all Christians are not Mennonites, all Moslems are not radical Islamic terrorists; however, just as all Mennonites are Christians, all of the radical Islamic terrorists are Moslems. Denial, particularly on a grand government-wide basis is not a good foundation on which to base a strategy to win the war.
We need a new strategy. Indeed, we need a strategy that will maximize our likelihood of success and will reduce the current advantages that we have been ceding to the terrorists. To come up with that strategy, we first have to recognize in a clear fashion the nature of the problem that we face. No amount of politically correct posturing will change that problem; we have to bluntly accept the actual facts and decide how best to deal with them. We also have to give up on the international structures that were built for dealing with other conflict which by their nature were totally different from the current struggle. The UN and the Geneva Convention and all those other international agreements about war may have helped when we had an adversary that had agreed to follow them. ISIS and the terrorists, however, are not such adversaries. The cry of "war crimes" when civilians get hit may currently deter American bombers and offer ISIS safe havens from which to work, but those same charges of war crimes do nothing to alter the actions of ISIS. In fact, ISIS intentionally puts its installations in locations where there are many civilians just so that it can use our reticence to strike back there. Just as Hamas puts its missile launchers and artillery in Gaza in hospitals, schools and even UN offices, ISIS has learned to do the same. If there are strikes back against these targets, the terrorists then run to the media and the NGO's in the West to try to use public opinion to prevent effective countermeasures to their attacks. Indeed, the terrorists want there to be civilian casualties so that they can promote the idea that the USA or the West wants to kill all Moslems. If you doubt this, consider the different treatment that is given to American bombing raids and those carried out by the Russians. If there are any civilian casualties from an American raid, they are paraded onto TV quickly as a means to deter American attacks. When the Russians carry out raids, there are never scenes of civilian casualties (even though there are many) because the terrorists know that the Russians do not care and will not be deterred by the images.
I am not advocating an all out attack on places where the terrorists are located; nor am I saying that such an attack would be wrong. I am just proposing that we need to consider a policy in which areas are told that if they allow the terrorists to operate freely there, there will be major retaliatory strikes and no concern will be made for civilian casualties. Local populations may be frightened of ISIS and its fighters, but might they be equally or more frightened of the response directed at those ISIS fighters that could cause all sorts of collateral damage.
The truth is that we have to start thinking of new ways of looking at this problem. We know pretty well that the current strategy (to the extent we have one) is a failure. It's time to -- in the words of the cliché -- think outside the box.
We need a new strategy. Indeed, we need a strategy that will maximize our likelihood of success and will reduce the current advantages that we have been ceding to the terrorists. To come up with that strategy, we first have to recognize in a clear fashion the nature of the problem that we face. No amount of politically correct posturing will change that problem; we have to bluntly accept the actual facts and decide how best to deal with them. We also have to give up on the international structures that were built for dealing with other conflict which by their nature were totally different from the current struggle. The UN and the Geneva Convention and all those other international agreements about war may have helped when we had an adversary that had agreed to follow them. ISIS and the terrorists, however, are not such adversaries. The cry of "war crimes" when civilians get hit may currently deter American bombers and offer ISIS safe havens from which to work, but those same charges of war crimes do nothing to alter the actions of ISIS. In fact, ISIS intentionally puts its installations in locations where there are many civilians just so that it can use our reticence to strike back there. Just as Hamas puts its missile launchers and artillery in Gaza in hospitals, schools and even UN offices, ISIS has learned to do the same. If there are strikes back against these targets, the terrorists then run to the media and the NGO's in the West to try to use public opinion to prevent effective countermeasures to their attacks. Indeed, the terrorists want there to be civilian casualties so that they can promote the idea that the USA or the West wants to kill all Moslems. If you doubt this, consider the different treatment that is given to American bombing raids and those carried out by the Russians. If there are any civilian casualties from an American raid, they are paraded onto TV quickly as a means to deter American attacks. When the Russians carry out raids, there are never scenes of civilian casualties (even though there are many) because the terrorists know that the Russians do not care and will not be deterred by the images.
I am not advocating an all out attack on places where the terrorists are located; nor am I saying that such an attack would be wrong. I am just proposing that we need to consider a policy in which areas are told that if they allow the terrorists to operate freely there, there will be major retaliatory strikes and no concern will be made for civilian casualties. Local populations may be frightened of ISIS and its fighters, but might they be equally or more frightened of the response directed at those ISIS fighters that could cause all sorts of collateral damage.
The truth is that we have to start thinking of new ways of looking at this problem. We know pretty well that the current strategy (to the extent we have one) is a failure. It's time to -- in the words of the cliché -- think outside the box.
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