Third Party & Independents: Archives

I don’t remember where I heard this from, I think it was a general, but he said you can’t fight a war against terrorism because it’s a war tactic, like guerilla warfare but nastier. He likened it to waging a war against every country who had ever used a flanking maneuver.

I don’t think our government has any idea how to fight this war, there’s a fine line between criminal acts and terrorist activity, and with a definition as loose as this, it’s no surprise that non-terrorists will be caught in the snare.

It is extremely hard to fight a war on “isms”, because for the most part they are not tangible things. Sure, you can see the effects of terrorism, but not the thing itself. In traditional warfare, one has a narrow focus, i.e. capturing a particular battlefield city, or number of enemy soldiers.
However, the problem with this particular war on terrorism, is that since it is intangible, it’s scope seems unfortunately infinite. As we yield more and more authority to one organization, I think that it helps to remeber the old cliche: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Nate—

I disagree with your basic premise, namely that it is hard to fight a war on “isms.” We fought and won WWII, and it was all about “isms:” Fascism, Nazism, and Totalitarianism. And the Cold War over Communism was won. The common tread that weaves its way through all, was leadership, focus, planning, insight and vision. In our current War on Terrorism, none of these qualities are present, and so we amble on aimlessly fighting skirmishes, winning a victory here and a victory there, but never able to get a grasp on the big picture.

By now Bush and his band of incompetents have managed to not only squander the good will deposited in the bucket of world public opinion after 9/11, but by not providing the leadership necessary to really take the fight to the terrorist on all fronts, they have allowed the Taliban to begin to reconstitute itself, once more threatening stability in Afghanistan, and indeed the entire region. What happened to terrorist having no place to hide? We laud the European Union’s proclamation that Hamas is indeed a terrorist organization, yet urge Israel not to assassinate the leaders of Hamas’ military arm! What gives?

The only way to win this “War” Against Terrorism is the take them out where they do business, period. Let them know that they truly have no place to hide; that we are willing and able to strike them anywhere they dwell without prejudice. Lack of leadership, vision and focus is the problem, not the intangibility of the thing…

V. Edward Martin: WWII also had countries and geography to represent those -isms, terrorism is largely faceless (aside from the ubiquitous Usama). I personally believe that the war is actually Nihilism (the terrorists) vs Capitalism (the West). It a circular argument because Capitalism does cause a lot of disenfranchised people in the Middle East and largely 3rd world countries (rich oil sheiks rule with iron fists), this is distasteful. Yet the proposed alternative from Al Qaeda et al. is to destroy everything and have some kind of fundamentalist world, which will not work. These two forces are feeding off each other though, and that is the problem, they are both caricatures of extremism and the people caught in the middle are the innocents such as those who died on 9/11 and those who died in retaliation of 9/11.

What is happening is that we are drawing ourselves into a cycle of violence where everyone is suspect (see PATRIOT). As Bush said: You are either with us or against us. All fundamentalists see it like that, and it’s the innocents who suffer the greatest in that struggle.

“The only way to win this “War” Against Terrorism is the take them out where they do business, period. Let them know that they truly have no place to hide; that we are willing and able to strike them anywhere they dwell without prejudice.”

just like we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pete—

There were no terrorists in Iraq until we (Bush Administration) invited them in with their incompetence.

V. Edward Marshall: You are right in that we have already beaten the odds and fought one war against isms in WW II, but as someone else said that war had a clearly and narrowly defined focus, namely Germany and Japan. Now if we were to attack every country that has even thought of supporting terrorism, (the Bush doctrine), then we would be fighting a never ending war. Obviously this would be catastrophic at best and apocolyptic at worst. The early stages of the war on terrorism seem quite similar to the early days of the Cold War, or war on communism. From the late forties to the late sixties, the US stumbled from one engagement to another. Sure we were fighting to contain communism in southeast asia, but what exactly did that mean? No one was able to adequately explain what the goal was, and the result was an embarrassing quagmire. It was not until later that we realized that international pressure could contain and evntuall defeat communism. The way to defeat an ism, whether it be terrorism, communism , or facism, is to have the world united against a particular evil. Sadly, this is something that the Bush junta does not realize.

Everyone is off track here. Why hasn’t anyone posted their outrage that the PATRIOT Act is being used/abused in this way? What is everyone’s thoughts on the two given cases?