A War Guns Can't Win

[Tri-Nitro-Toluene]

for the purpose of this topic Israel is included in 'the west'

We all know about the war on terror. We've been bombarded by stories to do with it, the consequences of it, and we've all heard the political speeches from virtually every western leader on it.

When this 'war' began the west chose a traditional way to fight the extremist threat. We picked up guns, headed off to Afghanistan, blew some stuff up, dethroned some maniacs and set up a democracy. Great, everything was going fine.

The west, thinking this tactic would continue to work, carried on as normal. Whether it be seen in Iraq, or even in Israels response to Hezbollah, we continued to use the gun as are chosen weapon in this' war'.

The problem? This isn't a war a gun can win.

You may be thinking ' Huh? What kind of war can't a gun win?', and I'm, here to tell you. A gun can not win a war for the hearts and minds of people.

Lets take a look at Israels response to Hezbollah. Now, whether you believe what Israel did was justified or not is irrelevant to my point, personally I think they were justified to a degree, but that does not negate the fact that the whole situation was a huge publicity nightmare when it came to winning peoples hearts and minds in the middle east, and also back home.

Lets look at the situation. Israel, backed by the rest of the west, engaged in an act of traditional warfare to try and stop rockets, kidnaps and all the normal middle east stuff. As a result of their tactics, a lot of collateral damage was caused, again,whether or not this is justified in your opinion is irrelevant. What matters is how it appears to those who count, and they are those people who can be persuaded to take arms up against us.

Now if you were a Muslim and saw what happened between Israel and Lebanon to get at Hezbollah, innocents being killed, lives disrupted, and all for almost nothing as the situation has not changed that much, you'd probably find yourself erring more towards the extremists as what you have just seen proves the propaganda they are spreading about us. That we are monstrous barbarous demons who care not for Islam or anything beyond our own backyard.

Look at any situation to do with the war on terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and you will find the same thing. The wests tactics have the fundamental flaw of proving what the bad guys say to be true.

Now if tactics aren't working then they should be changed, and I can see two options to choose between.

Option 1)

We deal with the causes, not the consequences.

We stop what to the Islamic world can be viewed as random bombing of tower blocks to get at one or two terrorists, killing 10's or even 100's of others in the process. We either close down camps like Gitmo, or we disprove the allegations surrounding them. It is easy to do. if there is nothing to hide then let some guys from Amnesty in as we can find out for certain either way what's going on.

This option is not likely to occur for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Governments of the world suck, and won't do the logical thing and deal with the causes rather than the consequences, as causes are a long term investment, and in order to maintain power, they need shirt term solutions to make themselves look good.

This then moves us swiftly onto the only other option as I see it.

Option 2)

We fight propaganda with propaganda.

The one thing we aren't using to it's best affect is our media. As nations the west has the ability to reach more people than the extremists do, simply because we have cash and they don't. Now I'm not talking about doing what the enemy is doing to us and painting the opposition as being demonic, we just counter what they do with the good we have done, and in general, we have done more good than bad.

We need to get OUR media into the middle east and start spreading the opposite side of the argument instead of just letting the extremists have their way. Hell, we need to start doing it in our own backyards as most terror threats are home grown. If we can show our own people ' hey we aren't that bad' then we at least are getting somewhere, and may be able to make progress elsewhere.

Of the two options, option 1 is the best as it actually deals with the problem. But if a problem can not be solved, then perhaps it can be hidden? If we can ' cover up' our less than exemplary examples to the rest of the world, then should we?

Thoughts?

[tony4moroney]

At 8/3/07 03:15 PM, Tri-Nitro-Toluene wrote:

We all know about the war on terror.

I think you lost me on this line. When I realized the wall of text I had to battle through I gave up.

[Elfer]

Uh, I think I've been telling this to people for a couple of years now.

You can't point a gun at someone's face and demand that they stop hating you, then expect it to work.

[tony4moroney]

At 8/3/07 03:20 PM, Elfer wrote: Uh, I think I've been telling this to people for a couple of years now.

You can't point a gun at someone's face and demand that they stop hating you, then expect it to work.

Where have I heard that before?

Oh right that reminds me of our foreign policy, but don't forget they hate us for our freedoms, our freedom for women and our love for women. thats why they chose to bomb us instead of you know, the dutch which aren't liberal at all.

[Memorize]

At 8/3/07 03:20 PM, Elfer wrote: Uh, I think I've been telling this to people for a couple of years now.

You can't point a gun at someone's face and demand that they stop hating you, then expect it to work.

Neither does just standing there saying "please stop hating me".

Reminds me of the UN.

[lapis]

At 8/3/07 03:15 PM, Tri-Nitro-Toluene wrote: We fight propaganda with propaganda.

Yeah, I don't think that'll have that much of an effect. I'm relatively sure that it has been tried in Iraq. Westerners and Iraqis have never really been Brudervölker so a Western occupation force in Iraq will always be regarded with a certain degree of mistrust. Therefore, if you have two Iraqi media outlets, one spreading pro-Western news and the other one anti-Western news, people will be more inclined to believe the messages of former and dismiss the reporting of the latter as propaganda (which it very well might have been in the first place).

Agitprop is always convenient if you want to keep the people that already support you motivated but propaganda will rarely sway those who never liked you if they have a differing source to get their news from. It might be helpful to have a propaganda station ready when your adversaries are involved in some sort of scandal, giving you the opportunity to really lash out against them. Then again, if your agency attained the stigma of a propaganda channel due to biased reporting in the past you might have already blown your chance. So it might be helpful to have a stealth propaganda channel ready that normally presents the news in an unbiased or perhaps even slightly pro-adversary fashion but which is ready to pounce on your opponents when they screw up. Nevertheless, I wouldn't expect the propaganda strategy to work miracles.

Propaganda is only really effective if your propaganda is the only available news source, but a war of ideologies is being fought and the core part of the West's ideology is supposed to be freedom, which includes freedom of information. If you forfeit that aspect of what we stand for the whole conflict turns into a Westerners vs. Muslim extremists battle instead of a Western and Iraqi pro-freedom people vs. Muslim extremists battle, which basically boils down to an inevitable defeat. Unless a more Stalinesque way of putting down revolts is adopted (which the home front will never swallow).

[Elfer]

At 8/3/07 04:11 PM, Memorize wrote:

At 8/3/07 03:20 PM, Elfer wrote: Uh, I think I've been telling this to people for a couple of years now.

You can't point a gun at someone's face and demand that they stop hating you, then expect it to work.

Neither does just standing there saying "please stop hating me".

Reminds me of the UN.

Well, since one of the big motivators for new recruits is the image of the US as an evil oppressor, military occupation certainly isn't helping to stem the flow of new terrorists and insurgents.

[Memorize]

At 8/3/07 05:03 PM, Elfer wrote:

Well, since one of the big motivators for new recruits is the image of the US as an evil oppressor, military occupation certainly isn't helping to stem the flow of new terrorists and insurgents.

Neither has sitting around doing nothing while they continue to recruit.

So the best you can possibley do is take them down and set up a force in the region where the non-extremists will fight against them, slowly making progress rather than none at all.

[MJOLNIRchief90]

This may be a bit too simplistic but there are only a few ways to deal with people who don't like you.

Imprisionment: Keep the people who don't like you locked up. The problem is to make sure you are only imprisioning the people who hate you. If Gitmo were filled up with top al queada operatives like Bin Laden, then no one would have a problem with it no matter how horrible the conditions.

Isolation: Either keep them away from you or keep away from them. Unfortunatly this doesn't work these days.

Destruction: Wipe the people who don't like you off of the earth. The problem is that that you need to get everyone or else more will spawn. Fortunatly for us, our enemies will often blow themselves up to hurt us. The problem is that they usually take a lot of us with them.

There is no way to win the hearts and minds of the people who don't like you. You must destroy those people while keeping the hearts of the people who like you.

[GaiusIuliusTaberna]

At 8/3/07 05:05 PM, Memorize wrote:

At 8/3/07 05:03 PM, Elfer wrote:

Well, since one of the big motivators for new recruits is the image of the US as an evil oppressor, military occupation certainly isn't helping to stem the flow of new terrorists and insurgents.

Neither has sitting around doing nothing while they continue to recruit.

So the best you can possibley do is take them down and set up a force in the region where the non-extremists will fight against them, slowly making progress rather than none at all.

Exactly! And wile we are at it we should get rid of most of the restrictions regarding terms of engagement. What we should do is impose a nation wide mandatory census of name, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and personal history and do a background check to confirm it. Then separate them in to zones put check points as well as physical patrolled borders between them and kill or capture any one who try's to approach without authorization after ordering them to leave (if they don't comply obviously). This way you can short out who the enemy is and fight them hard yes, expensive defiantly but it's the only way. At least that's my opinion as of now we are basically fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. One last thing there is no war that can't be won it's merely a mater of will if we go all out we can break alqueda. One must ask, how far are we willing to go? In my opinion we should take alqueda to the Triari!

[SmilezRoyale]

The one thing we aren't using to it's best affect is our media. As nations the west has the ability to reach more people than the extremists do, simply because we have cash and they don't. Now I'm not talking about doing what the enemy is doing to us and painting the opposition as being demonic, we just counter what they do with the good we have done, and in general, we have done more good than bad.

You're under the illusion that:

1) The US government can issue a bill stating that the media needs to start making terrorists look like... terrorists. The media is a private selling corporation.

2) The media actually favors the united states over the terrorists.

Both of which are wishfull thinking.

You fight the terrorist threat by converting your populace to islam.

[GaiusIuliusTaberna]

A valid point we should use the media to convert the populous over from extremism towards the Ideals of freedom.

[Flyborg]

Too much text!

If it can't be said in one paragraph, don't say it. ;)

...I saw a nice comic a while ago. It was a picture of a US plane dropping a seed packet labled "Terrorist Seeds". Bombs fell out of the packet. Think that pretty much sums up the problem.

It's like someone punching a wall because it caused pain to his fist, and saying "If I stop, the wall wins".. so he punchs harder...

[MJOLNIRchief90]

At 8/3/07 05:57 PM, Flyborg wrote: It's like someone punching a wall because it caused pain to his fist, and saying "If I stop, the wall wins".. so he punchs harder...

Unfortunatly, this is a wall that will kick our asses if we don't deal with it.

[animehater]

At 8/3/07 06:09 PM, MJOLNIRchief90 wrote: Unfortunatly, this is a wall that will kick our asses if we don't deal with it.

Don't you see? If you leave the them alone they will magically dissapear and we can all go back to eating Chocolate on the rainbow with fairies and shit.

[MortifiedPenguins]

Well, you don't need to win the hearts and minds of the people if you can just use guns to kill all of them off.

[animehater]

At 8/3/07 06:49 PM, MortifiedPenguins wrote: Well, you don't need to win the hearts and minds of the people if you can just use guns to kill all of them off.

it's kinda stupid to use guns though. I'll stick with the poison gas thank you very much.

[robattle]

This war is much different then most wars, as such we must do something much different.

[BMXJOE]

I agree. What we need to do is take out our troops, tell France they can take care of it themselves and....... BOOM! Drop the bombs on them like we did to Japan. You know why they called that bomber Enola Gay? To let them know they were about to get it in the ass.

[GaiusIuliusTaberna]

At 8/3/07 07:03 PM, robattle wrote: This war is much different then most wars, as such we must do something much different.

That's foolish all war's are the same there are always fought with one or more of the following 4 goals in mind.
Conquest: the desire throw greed or necessity to take either land, wealth, or natural resources
Ideals: the desire to force people to believe what they believe
Genocide: the desire to annihilate a race of some stupid reason.
Preventive wars: thought that wars must be waged for the sake of neutralizing threats to the survival of that said country.

And all wars are fought essentially the same way.
Neutralize the enemy's ability to fight.
Demoralize there will to fight
Kill, imprison, or force to capitulate the leader of there cause.

In that order

This can be achieved no what
Of cores this can be only be done if we are willing to do what is necessary and act with ruthlessness. My philosophy on the subject is in administration ruthlessness is deplorable during war it is admirable. How do you think we won world war two we set Germany and Japan on fire. Then when Japan didn't give in, we unleashed a nuclear holocaust upon them. War is hell but so is the future if this war isn't fought

[GaiusIuliusTaberna]

Also don't forget the Japanese invented the kamikaze or suicide bomb. We beat them and we can beat the new extremists.

[SmilezRoyale]

At 8/3/07 08:49 PM, GaiusIuliusTaberna wrote: Also don't forget the Japanese invented the kamikaze or suicide bomb. We beat them and we can beat the new extremists.

That's different... that's flying a jet into american warships; They could be shot down. Explosives that terrorists use are easy to conceil, and can only be destroyed preemtively.

[tony4moroney]

At 8/3/07 10:32 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

At 8/3/07 08:49 PM, GaiusIuliusTaberna wrote: Also don't forget the Japanese invented the kamikaze or suicide bomb. We beat them and we can beat the new extremists.

That's different... that's flying a jet into american warships; They could be shot down. Explosives that terrorists use are easy to conceil, and can only be destroyed preemtively.

no i think the real problem is we knew who were responsible for kamikaze attacks, we knew who we were fighting whereas all these insurgents and terrorists come from all over the middle-east and receive funding and weaponry from again, a multitude of sources. now unless some idiot proposed we nuke pakistan, iran, saudi arabia, lebanon, iraq, syria we're not going to win this fight with weapons.

[IllustriousPotentate]

I have a theory on this.

The Infinte Jenga Theory.

The theory is simply this. The United States' involvement in the Middle East is such, that, for every action taken in the Middle East, the negative consequences will outweigh the positives.

It's like a infinitely huge game of Jenga. For every block, there is an infinite number of blocks above it. This means that
1) It's hard to move any block out
2) The game is, by nature, unstable
3) When a wrong move is made, a large number of blocks come falling down, obscuring and knocking over the blocks that remain standing.
4) It takes a long time to rebuild the blocks.

The U.S.'s problem: You can't win, and you must play the game.

[Cuppa-LettuceNog]

The issue is that certain causes for terrorism are points that we, as a nation, can not cede to the enemy. For example, the Fatwah on U.S lives issues by Osama Bin Laden (the one that caused 9/11) clearly stipulates that it will last as long as the U.S continues to offer support for Israel. If we allow them to boss us around, only THEN does their terrorism work. As long as we're still ATTEMPTING to win the war with guns, every terror attack that they make is, by definition, a failure.

[LightandDark]

At 8/3/07 07:12 PM, BMXJOE wrote: I agree. What we need to do is take out our troops, tell France they can take care of it themselves and....... BOOM! Drop the bombs on them like we did to Japan. You know why they called that bomber Enola Gay? To let them know they were about to get it in the ass.

you know what the result of a nuclear explosion does?

FUCKING NUCLEAR RADIATION!

:we be lucky if the radiation stayed in the Middle East, let alone not kill anybody.

[Korriken]

At 8/4/07 12:07 AM, LightandDark wrote:

FUCKING NUCLEAR RADIATION!

we be lucky if the radiation stayed in the Middle East, let alone not kill anybody.

well turning the middle east into a glass parking lot WOULD solve a lot of problems, but the fallout would cause more problems. destroying the ENTIRE middle east would be impossible to do without causing massive harm to the earth itself. Instead, only port cities and major cities should be targeted for annihilation. burn the biggest cities to the ground by bombing them into dust, destroy all ports, destroy all military bases, and make sure they can never amass any wealth ever again. disallow anyone from entering or leaving the middle east. however this, too, is impossible.

We're righting a war we cannot win. even their governments are airing cartoons and other shows that demonize the non muslim west, teach hatred and destruction, and yet, our hands are tied. we cannot march over and destroy their governments, that would "confirm" their beliefs. However if we do nothing, they are taught that non muslims are evil, and when they see we are non muslim, it "confirms" their beliefs. How can you stop it?

[GaiusIuliusTaberna]

You guys are missing my point I mean the Japanese were radicals like the extremists. We demoralized them into surrendering and we can sure as hell demoralize these new guys. If they think by killing themselves they'll be all set in the after life that's fine. We'll send them to Allah in droves! We also don't have to nuke them incendiary bombs work fine once you get a good fire storm going. I don't see the difference from using terror tactics In WW2 and using them here. But like I said before we can win by:

Imposing a nation wide mandatory census of name, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and personal history and do a background check to confirm it. Then separate them in to zones put check points as well as physical patrolled borders between them and kill or capture any one who try's to approach without authorization after ordering them to leave (if they don't comply obviously). This way you can short out who the enemy is and fight them hard yes, expensive defiantly but it's the only way.

On top of that we should launch a pro western propaganda campaign in order to further demoralize the terrorists, cut of there recruitment by attacking it at its source and demonize them in the minds of there innocent counterparts. It's not like we would have to lie, in this case about all we can do is understate things and why bother.