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.

Sharkfin, it is not supremist thinking at all. The terrorists see taking innocent lives as acceptable, I dont (and the philosophy of our country and most of the West has always been this). America's approach for a long long time has been "protect ourselves and damn the consequences to anyone else", which is why I am not a big fan of the US.

Look, I am not saying that we shouldnt defend ourselves to the best of our abilities, but in no circumstance is the taking of the life of a non-combatant justified. If we take that approach then we are no better than the terrorists - scum. I would like to think more highly of myself and those around me. If you want to be a murderer (which is effectively what you are condoning), go live somewhere else because all you will do is invite even more attacks.

c gal, maybe we are in for a long spate of 'asymmetric warfare', where one side doesn't wear uniforms. hard to sort out the noncombatants then. only solution is to get out of their country, but as one yank put it- "it's a shame our oil is under their country."

then there's the problem of rich non-combatants hiring soldiers to do their killing for them. should they be untouchable?

So Sharkfin wants us to kill women and children now? Am i reading this post correctly?
At any rate the whole 'Make a war on Terror so we can get away with stuff' thing has been done before, i don’t know why the public can fall for it again. Regan had his War on Terror years ago against countries in Central and South America, and consequentially the International Courts found the United States guilty of terrorism.
The only way to win the stupidly named war on terror is to change the brain chemistry of every human so we no longer fear. Failing that, why not stop screwing around with other countries just to benefit yourselves, seems simple to me. Most of these terrorist attacks were perpetrated by countries that aggravated people. Though their actions may be extreme, their causes cannot be denied, nor responsibility for the ignored.

The so called “WAR ON TERROR” was the excuse by the federal government to purportedly fight a war but it was as to employ the High Court of Australia 1943 judgment that it could then suspend civil rights in time of war.

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a facist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Hermann Goering, Hitlers' Reich-Marshall, at the Nuremberg trials after WW2.

Sure, the High Court of Australia had it wrong as the Framers of the Constitution made clear that the Commonwealth of Australia had no powers to deal with “civil rights” as that was left to the States, but who cares really? The Judges aren’t going to take on the Federal Government.
The “WAR AGAINST TERROR” is against any INDIVIDUAL the Government pretends might be a terrorist, regardless if the person actually is or isn’t.
As such, it is against any individual. Hence, the individuals, such as in the Bali incident in their view consider it legitimate to kill Australians as after all they are in a WAR declared by this Australian Government.
I do not support any kind of killing, but one can hardly blame just those committing bombings where the Federal Government declared a war onto them. In that regard they respond in kind!
As such, it is the Federal Government that is the real culprit! Its declaration of war served for it to grab more power but as result has needlesly cost many Australian lives!

Alanpoi, " 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 "

Perhaps the framework for the war on terror is closer to the war on drugs rather than conventional war.

Then again we don't seem to be doing very well with that war either.

R0bert