No one is an expert on police work here, but it is clear that you can't apprehend terrorists and prevent terrorism by conventional warfare, unless you wage war to the point of putting Kurtz's postscriptum -- Exterminate all the brutes! -- into practice.
You have to use intelligence to apprehend terrorists, and you have to win "hearts and minds" to prevent terrorism. The latter and the former are inseparably connected to each other as well. The most effective method of collecting intelligence is not the creation of the global Panopticon. Why? Because you can never muster enough manpower with requisite analytical capacity and linguistic competence to digest the ocean of data that necessarily results from the global Panopticon -- too much noise, in which significant signals inevitably get lost. What you need is capable analysts and smart informants, on whose loyalty and veracity you can count, from the very communities among whom terrorists are suspected of hiding.
If you want to apprehend Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, etc., the last thing that you want to do is to alienate the majority of Muslim and Arab populations in the world, by making war on Iraq, allowing Israel to continue occupation and attack Palestinians with impunity, using ethnic and religious profiling on Arabs and Muslims, and so on; and to lose capable analysts by sacking gay linguists when there is a dire shortage of translators and interpreters. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>