The cause's of terrorism.

After 9/11 Dubya jumped in with both feet straight into "The War On Terror", with "The Man Of Steel' hanging onto his bootstraps.
At no time has there been a debate or a study made on why we have terror or on the best method to combat it.

Instead we have a "War On Terror" which has done absolutely nothing to abate terror and has indeed had the opposite effect by increasing terror.

You can't have a war on terror its ridculous, to have a war you need at least 2 armies, a patch of dirt to fight over,someone to negotiate a peace with and a defined result i.e. one side are all dead, they can see they are beaten or they run out of dirt,you can't do any of these things with terrorist's except negotiate and that better be good or it won't work either.

If you ask the French and the English they could both tell you a thing or two,
(A) You can't beat terror with conventional warfare.
(B) Eventually you have to sit down and talk to them.
(C) Modern technology is perfect for terrorism (the days of standing armies facing each other and blasting away may well be over).
(D) Terrorist's get better as they get more practice, wheras your standing army get demoralised and scared as their training is useless against sonething they can't get a grip on.

This has been proved in Algeria and Ireland just to name two places.
What we have however are conservative regimes in USA and Australia
entering into a symbiotic relationship with terrorist's, one side are using terrorism to scare the voters and the other side using the reactionary actions of the other to recruit more followers,( which is one of the reasons why 9/11 occured as they needed more recruits and a massive overreaction by the USA would achieve that goal they hoped).

I very much doubt that world denomination is their goal, more likely overthrow of a few of the more liberal Islamist regime's and the introduction of Sharia Law.

How do you fight hate and bigotry?
While America has fought a battle that was so badly fought it would not be out of place among those of world war 1, how do you fight this war?
Better hopefully, Iraq was not part of the war on terrorism, looking back it may well have been revenge for attempts to kill the father of todays leader of the USA.
The war must be fought for the hearts and minds of those not yet committed in the name of a hate filled section of a religion to our death.
From within that religion our best chance of peace lays.
No turn the other check however can win us anything, and we must review the wests making its self a target by importing the problem to our country's.

why should we have a debate? who exactly is 'we'?

debate's are meaningless charades unless the listeners can initiate a course of action based on the argument.

among the passive cow-people of australia, listening to a debate is rightly judged to be a waste of time, for they can do nothing.

among the quasi-potent members of a major political party, there may be a debate, perhaps informal, but the coercive structure of a party mutes the voice of reason. the 'wrong' path may be chosen as an electoral ploy, and 'unity' will be used to stifle dissent.

no real democracy? then no real debate. pretty obvious, really- wonder if ozzians will ever catch on..

Belly, we must turn the other cheek to some extent. To strike back hurting innocent people in the process makes us worse (because we should know better and we dont have fundamentalist brainwashing to blame). Striking back will only increase tensions and increase the liklihood of recruits to the otherwise, unless it can be done swiftly and effectively. The US is not known for being swift or effective, not to mention that this is impossible to achieve when you are fighting a group of people, not a country.

We instead need to use similar tactics. Whilst I dont fully endorse undercover groups, using like forces to attack like forces is the only effective means of warfare in this type of war. This is the territory of the CIA etc - like I said, I'm not necessarily comfortable with it, but seems eminently more sensible than brute force. Of course if its conducted behind closed doors, it makes it hard to claim credit for a win or even to demonstrate that you are doing something...

But please, its not the war on terror, its the war an terrorism. The media (and Dubya) just use the former because its easier to say. But using this term would suggest that they come and nuke the big spider that causes me terror - stupid.

Country Gal -: To strike back hurting innocent people makes us worse because we know better.

This is a kind of supremisist thinking that is very common in the West. Oh those poor Arab terrorists dont know what they're doing because they are not as smart as us elite Westerners. Rubbish!they know exactly what they are doing. The IRA were terrorists.
They were Westerners, why didnt they know better?

If these terrorist groups from these tribes race over and kill your loved ones again and again and you never strike back and kill their loved ones then you allow them to strike without consequence.

"This is the territory of the CIA." This means that the CIA could enter these countries and kill the ones they suspect of terrorism without a fair trial. Holy shades of David Hicks the horror of it!

I think we should go further and every time we are attacked, we send secret terror groups to bomb the cities where the families of the terrorists live. After all they are not prepared to wage war in the conventional sense so armies are useless against them. So lets fight a terrorist war using secretive groups to retaliate. Lets fight terrorists with terrorists as armies are ineffective in this kind of war.

Two can play the games the Arabs are playing with us. We too can allow terrorist groups to plan secret attacks in their countries and deny that we support them that we are all moderate Westerners.

Oh heavens that would go against the Western code of honour. Well thats the way the British lost a couple of wars by trying to fight the old army way and being defeated by ambush and run tatics by sides that didnt have the military sophistication of the British.

Thats why I say the Arab commanders know exactly what they are doing and how to defeat the West. They are not silly and dont know better like you say. Territorial warfare is as natural a skill to men as women producing babies. It cant be unlearnt its innate from birth.

"Thats why I say the Arab commanders know exactly what they are doing and how to defeat the West. They are not silly and dont know better like you say. Territorial warfare is as natural a skill to men as women producing babies. It cant be unlearnt its innate from birth." -Sharkfin

Good grief. I've heard some militant tripe espoused here, but that takes the cake.

I'm a guy. I know nothing of "territorial warfare." I wasn't born with knowledge of military tactics, I wasn't born with knowledge of acquiring territory. As for producing babies, I dunno about you, but my body doesn't automatically acquire territory after sex.

Putting aside all the interference the West has had in the middle east, despite that, most muslim nations are far more concerned about their neighbours and internal disputes than they are about America. Yeah, most don't like the US, but it's kind of hard for them not to when there's so much carnage going on right now... even then, I think you'll find most Iraqi sects would prefer US soldiers on their territory, than armed members of opposing sects.

I'm not saying that these countries are ever going to warm to the west, and they may well be enemies - though while the more moderate ones mightn't like the west much, (Pakistan, Jordan) they're not about to launch an attack.

You may see the whole world is shades of war Sharkfin, but don't try and impress that on me. I prefer, 'live and let live' and sure, you can dismiss me as a bleeding heart type, but I'll take that over paranoid warmongerer any day - and I can assure you, I am quite pragmatic regarding these issues.