TERRORISM, WIN, LOSE OR DRAW? (No Poll)

Considering the last 40 years, many would consider a draw to be a win.

Define "win." Does that mean that moderate, non-Jihadi/Wahbist Muslims lose sway and less violent Muslims convince the majority of their fellow believers to give up tactics of terrorism and violence? The western nations have been attempting to influence this outcome but it doesn't seem to be accomplishing the intended results.

No one can win in the battle of demographics when they barely manage to make population replacement. Almost without exception, as affluence and western education increase in a population, the reproductive rates for that demographic group goes down. Several countries have been looking at even or negative population growth. In the end, no culture can survive if they do not reproduce and pass along their cultural values. Additionally, western culture seem t have abandoned many of the most distinct and I would argue important aspects of what have made western culture dominant for the past 700 to 800 years.

The only thing that will ultimately beat Islamic terrorism is internal strife between Muslims. My $.02

I think when he says one Boston per year, he's actually right. A couple hundred die in a tornado, a mudslide, a bombing, out of 350,000,000 is not significant unless we make it so.

Longer term, I think the culture of Islam will change if and when there is a stable capitalist society in the Middle East. It's pretty tough to get someone to stop watching tv and having sex after a nice dinner to go blow themselves up.

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Originally Posted by merl

How, rounding up everyone following Islam and shooting them?

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No. And no need to round them up. Untie the hands of the military and fight this like a war. There are also ways of punishing states that allow these people to operate within their borders. But it's all academic because it isn't going to happen.

CAN we fight it and win? Sure we could if we had the cohesiveness and tough-mindedness that we displayed 70 years ago.

WILL we do it? My observation of societal changes, The Powers That Be, and the past 2-3 generations suggests that we are likely to lose and dismally so. Osama bin Laden thought America was a paper tiger and -- with rare exception -- the last 40 years has shown he was right. It took us years in Iraq and Afghanistan to get to a total casualty figure equal to the first day on Iwo Jima but that was enough to get a substantial portion of the population to vote in people with a proven track record of perfidy, incompetence, and downright treasonous intent. People freak out when little kids draw crude pictures of firearms or bite their Pop-Tarts into the shape of a handgun and it's the kids who did it (or their parents) who get flak instead of the morons who get apoplectic at the sight of an inanimate object.

The civilized world can win against savages. The Brits showed that during Pax Brittanica but they and we have let our national backbones turn to jelly. A century ago, Shackelton advertised for men for his Antarctica expedition saying

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MEN WANTED for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.

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and got dozens upon dozens of applicants. Today, a lot of kids won't consider a job unless they get wifi, A/C, time to peruse Facebook and Twitter, and get comfy ergonomic furniture. Older people won't consider it unless it meets union demands and will chastise anyone willing to do more for less. In 40 years, we've gone from the Apollo astronauts to Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber -- yeah, that society isn't going to win against the Islamists. We not only need a modern Patton, we need a society that would support him fighting the enemy.

You can't win a war with religiously motivated people.
We wage war for economical reasons (don't give me all that idealistic bullshit, the poor bastard going to war may fight for ideas, but our government fights for money);
When the losses are higher than the potential gains, war is over.
For Muslims there is no lose: if they lose and die fighting they go to heaven, if they win for the glory of Allah they go to heaven.
And no, you cannot possibly nuke every Muslim on earth.
Even if we stayed out of the middle east bullshit it would have caught up with us sooner or later.
We need to dig in and mind our own businesses as much as possible.
And we need to get the fuck out of there ASAP.

What enemy do you expect to be fighting like it was WW2? They are not wearing uniforms and they look just like the next guy. You can play whack-a-mole getting training camps but I don't see how the military is expected to win this.

The only way the "War on Terrorism" is winnable would be to make the cost to those that wage it against us so very brutal and horrific that the will to wage said war wanes.
We would have to break their resolve to wage war.


Neva gonna happen.
The world would not allow it even if we had the spine to do so.

We lost the war in 1291.... last crusade.

Radical Islam will never go away. What you can do is beat them back from your door step with military might. It's already happened several times in history. This country already did it once with the Barbary pirates.

Unfortunately, the current population has lost touch with the cold reality of the world.

There is no common ground. You kill them or they kill you. There is no middle way.

A country that is several hundred years old, supposing to eradicate an ideology that is several thousand years old? -naivete' on steroids.

The U.S. has failed miserably at learning from the mistakes and failures of other countries. Whether it be Indochina or Afghanistan, other's have tried, others have failed, and we seemingly think that "this time, it will be different!". It's sad, but it's seemingly what we are doomed to repeat. Drones, will not kill ideas.

But fear not, we'll spend untold Billions on the effort.