As for terror, my point vs, Luke is just that it's crime first of all, and not war, and should be dealt with by police methods, not by military force. Of course we should also deal with the root causes. Of course we're not doing either of these things.
jks
--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
> Jks:
> > By leading to the capture and arrest of its
> > leadership, duh. You might as well say the same
> thing
> > about the Mafia. Are they too big for police
> methods?
>
> That assumes that organized crime or organized
> terror are top-driven
> phenomena, so decapitation will kill the beast. But
> that is a rather
> simplistic view. Methinks, these are products of
> social relations, in
> which US foreign policy plays a relatively small
> role. These relations
> include the supply factor (the availability of
> people who for social,
> economic or personal reasons are willing to join
> terror/criminal
> organizations, and the availability of matewrial
> resources that enables
> those organizations to pursue their goals), the
> demand factor (the
> availability of people who are in the position to
> support and provide
> resources to these organizations), and the
> opportunity/transaction cost
> factor (circumstances that make certain courses of
> actions easier to
> implent than others).
>
> Taking that into consideration, arresting leaders
> without destrying the
> social base for organized crime/terror will do
> little to root it out -
> as the prosecution of Mafia in Italy clearly
> illustrates. Of course,
> rooting out social causes does not necessarily
> involve a militray
> operation/occupation - but it usually requires it to
> carry out other
> measures.
>
> As I see it, terrorism is product of three factors:
> overpopulation in
> central Asia and Middle east (i.e. the supply of
> large numbers of people
> who are economically marginalized), supply of
> material resources making
> terrorist actions possible (money, transportation,
> and efficient and
> cheap military technology), and the demand for
> terrorist organizations
> from the national political leaders at various point
> in time (e.g.
> Pakistan, US, Palestine, Iran, Saudi Arabia to name
> a few). Capturing
> the leaders of terrorist organizations without
> eliminating the root
> causes will at best make a dent in the tip of an
> iceberg.
>
> Wojtek
>
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