While I realize that every post can’t be about everything, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for an article titled “What Will ‘Actually Solve’ Terrorism Problem?”, like this one at Breaking Defense by James Kitfield to present some proposals for actually solving the terrorism problem. Instead it lists a few things that don’t work including torture and decapitation strikes. To those I would add overthrowing the governments of countries that are probable homes for terrorist groups and losing track of immigrants from those countries when they’re in the United States.
I don’t honestly know what would work. The only things I can think of are mass exterminations and bottling the populations of countries producing terrorist groups up until the fever passes. I reject the former as immoral and consider the latter a much more humane solution. It wouldn’t solve the problems of the countries being bottled up but it would solve ours. That appears to be more than Americans or at least American elites will stomach so I guess we’re stuck with terrorism for the foreseeable future.
Terrorism goes down when people and groups have political agency. People turn to violence to achieve political ends when they believe that they have no power in the existing system. Therefore, IMO, the best way to combat terrorism is to increase political legitimacy and inclusion. Unfortunately, that is not something the US can impose from the outside and, in fact, we seem to be on a path here that will inevitably increase domestic political violence.
While I agree with what you say above, I think there’s even more to it. People who don’t think the rules are fair will engage in violence. It doesn’t require a majority or even a lot of people who think that way for major violence to happen.
I think that relatively few of the people in the Middle East are terrorists or likely to become terrorists. All it takes is a few who are convinced of the rightness of their cause and that the system is unfair. Today’s personal empowerment means that an attack that would have killed one or two people a century ago can now kill hundreds or even thousands. Soon that number could be tens of thousands or even millions.
Is there a practical way to bottle up people from every country that has produced a terrorist? We aren’t going to let people from the UK come here? France? India? The list is pretty long. If there were just a single country, I think people would be willing to go along. Well, except for Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Steve
Hmmm … I kind of think someone clever might have predicted Islamic terrorists 30 0r 40 years ago — back in the dawning days of Ronald Reagan. The thing is, the Middle East had startlingly high birth rates back then — there seemed to be 7 to 8 kids in every family — and employment stunk. And the place was awash in religious fundamentalists, dictatorships, and petty monarchies. It shouldn’t really a been a big reach to envision a future with lots of embittered out-of-work men, being told to blame their miserable lives on Jews and Crusaders and other European interlopers.
But all the Big Domes in our government and elsewhere looked at the Middle East and saw nothing but *** O*I*L ***!
Ah well, I wasn’t all that observant myself.
‘Political Agency’?’ The Arab World and many Muslim majority nations who have tried democracy tend to have one, count ’em one election, and it’s one in which tribalism and factionalism always dictate the outcome. After that, things revert to the usual autocracy.
Iraq and the ‘Palestinian’ elections are fine examples, with kleptocrat Mahmoud Abbas in year11 of what was supposed to be a four year term. By and large, very few Muslim countries can function as democracies, because such an arrangement goes strictly against what’s in the Qur’an.
But the question at hand, terrorism.
It continues because we refuse to name it, recognize it and deal with it as it needs to be dealt with.
Has it occurred to anyone here that one reason Islam based terrorism keeps happening is because we’ve handled it so that there’s no downside for the Muslims who perpetrate and support it? If the attack is successful, they’re holy martyrs with a ticket to their misogynist paradise if they’re killed, and if it isn’t successful they get points for making a jihadi attempt anyway. If they aren’t killed, they’re holy martyrs and heroes too. Abbas calls them exactly that, and uses the donor funds we and others give them to reward convicted Arab murderers and their families for killing civilians financially, with the payout directly related to how many civilians they murder. So does Hezbollah and Iran. So it’s a win-win.
Want to really stop it? Here’s how.
1) name the Muslim Brotherhood and their front groups like CAIR and MPAC terorrists groups, which they are, and kick them out of America.
2) Put the suspected jihad mosques financed by overseas Muslim Brotherhood money through the North American Islamic Trust(NAIT)
put them under active surveillance and shut down and remove any radical jihadi clerics involved.
3) Block jihadi websites, and crackdown on social media to take the same hard line towards jihadi users they now take towards political conservatives and Trump supporters.
4) Start listening to decent Muslims who love their country and giving them precedence rather than Islamists
5) Secure our borders and institute Trump’s travel ban.
6) There are several Muslim countries that avidly support terrorism…Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar are the worst offenders. Iran was even complicit in 9/11 and got off scot free (thank you Bushie and Obama).
5) The next time a terrorist attack is CLEARLY traced to one of these, make them an example. Unleash the full might of America on them. Bomb their oil and gas fields, their infrastructure, their ports, and their military installations and anything else that comes to mind, with disproportionate retaliation as a guideline. Then leave the mess alone AND DON’T REBUILD A SINGLE THING. That will provide the downside needed to convince the others that aiding and assisting any future attacks is unthinkable because of the possible consequences.
Oh, and those famous ‘lone wolves?’ Look at your history my friends, there is no terrorist group in history that has been able to survive for long without a host country as a sanctuary, financier, training group and recruiting depot. The IRA fell apart once Eire got tired of them, began cooperating with the UK to break up the cells, intercept illegal weapons shipments, and stopped winking at overseas financing from places like America.
I think it should be apparent that we don’t have the stomach for any of those measures, Rob.