Does not work if a system is in place as a machine for creating more that would wage war. That is why I prefer the neocons to some other cons that might just try to blow up all the terrorists rather than at least attempt nation-building afterward. Such ideology of just trying to crush all those that wage war tends to get sloppy and kill a lot of innocents. In this case, that is adding fuel to the fire.
A prerequisite to stopping a warlike group is turning the masses against that group. It ensures that the masses will not harbor or allow such a group to reemerge. Ideally we'd like to see an Iraqi army viewed as legitimate by the people deliver the crushing blow to the insurgents. That cannot be achieved through war alone. To put out a fire, you first must remove its fuel sources. When a fire is raging, you cannot beat it out, no matter how big your towel... unless you are willing to crush a lot of the area surrounding the fire. It is better to deliver the goods in the surrounding area from the fire so that the fire burns itself out and can be easily beaten down with a dishtowel.

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Java, I don't disagree. I think, though, that we're not talking so much about waging war vs. waging peace, but rather what a good strategy is for waging war that doesn't lose the peace. It's part and parcel of the same thing. World War 1 led to World War 2 precisely for this reason.

40 terrorists (not kids) in one day of a campaign is better than not doing anything and having no campaigns at all and allow those same terrorists kill hundreds. But I'm sure you will disagree with that.

__________________
http://www.politicalyard.com - Talk politics, site upcoming
http://www.charliepage.net - My blog site

"Old soldiers never die; they just fade away" - Douglas MacArthur

Wow, say, uh, you wouldn't be interested in some oceanfront property in Oklahoma would you? Terrorists, there may be a few, mostly you'd see a bunch of scared kids shaking in their boots. The terrorists are recruiting these kids faster than we're recruiting those poor peasants though. They are promised quite a lot of moolah I believe, for joining up with the insurgents. I think they make more as an insurgent than as an Iraqi soldier. Maybe we need to up the Hershey bars. You think it is worth trillions of American dollars to continue this nonsense. They don't really want us there but the poor devil's country is a shambles, no one is in charge, many of them have lost their parents/the breadwinner of the family, they are hungry and homeless--THEY DON'T HAVE A LOT OF SAY IN THE MATTER EITHER. What a mess. Those 40 they captured only exist because of us invading a country we had no right to invade in the first place. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

__________________
"Who can this be? For He commands even the winds and the waves, and they obey Him." Luke 8:25

Exactly. There will always be "people like me". That is not going to change. So my statement was accurate.

Really? If Bush went against their wishes (for whatever reason), explain to me what they could do about it.

Of course he would. The car is the wrong color.

__________________
My Political Blog (Updated Oct 3rd) - Which Flame Warrior are you?

Though I won't use it as the reasoning for backing out as Bombeni often does, I see the point. If you kill forty but three-hundred forty are being recruited, you are only stopping growth by a fraction and not making any dents. If this is all we can do, I guess it is worth it.
However if there are policies or techniques that can reduce the rate of growth significantly, it is better to use those than the current ones. If we can do both, even better. But we are going to have to face the fact that before we reduce the numbers of terrorists we must stop or heavily slow their growth. Otherwise we are fighting a losing battle. A reduction in numbers would require techniques other than combat and policing: economic stability, empowerment of the masses, winning over the people, undermining the efficacy of the insurgency (rather than just trimming it). If these things are to take time and money and troops away from the usual combat, it is worth it as they will provide more stability.

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Java that diplomacy you suggest is great, and would have worked beautifully after 911. We had the whole world (almost) feeling sorry for us and witnessing the tragedy 24 hours a day by television. Wow what a time to start working towards real peace with the middle east. At that time, it was a handful of terrorists. With diplomacy, we could have turned the general muslim population against the terrorists. At least we could have tried. And with no more deaths. Imagine that. I don't think that would work now however. Invading and killing them like flies is going to take a long time to live down. Uh, just my opinion, as always.

__________________
"Who can this be? For He commands even the winds and the waves, and they obey Him." Luke 8:25

I don't see how you can consider it a cause/effect scenario. You have locals, you have joyride jihadis coming in from everywhere from Iran to Syria, you have people pushing their own agendas like al-Sadr, you have former Ba'athists, etc. etc. etc. And you know what...you have a lot of people who are thankful that we're there, even if on one level they feel shame that they needed us.

And we absolutely had every right to invade, considering we left the job undone a decade before, and that Saddam was absolutely acting like he had WMDs.

How do you know that? This conflict isn't over yet. The new governments of both Afganistan and Iraq are not yet stable. There are rebels in both nations right now trying to knock out the new regimes. New hostile governments could easily crop up.

So that means that it can't exist and shouldn't be strived for?

=================================================

Can anyone explain to me what the hell Bombeni is talking about in this thread?

__________________
WARNING: In the unlikely event of an accidental agreement with any or all points made in the above post, contact a clinical psychologist immediately.

The views expressed in the above post are not necessarily those of Joker and/or any of his affiliates.

"You have found the secret message. Do you have too much time on your hands? ...Let it go."

Left the job undone from a decade before. Uh-huh and they really played hell to us for that decade, we suffered greatly didn't we?

And your comment, Saddam was ACTING like he had WMDs. Well Iran isn't just ACTING like they are going to have them, they are TELLING us point blank. And I am sure Bush is now planning his invasion. Are you for that too? Ever hear the old saying (my grandma said it a lot) "You catch more files with honey than you do with vinegar?"

__________________
"Who can this be? For He commands even the winds and the waves, and they obey Him." Luke 8:25