Logic of the War on Terror.

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Subject: Logic of the War on Terror.
Siddar 3/20/2004 5:37:58 AM

Logic of the War on Terror The purpose of this post is to outline the types of responses a Goverment can make to the threat of terror along a spectrum of conflict model. I will outline eight levels of response that goverments can make to Terror this is not to impose a rigid set of guidelines on a goverment terror policys . Most anti terror policys dont conform completely to eight responses I lay out in that they will tend to fall into different areas and not follow a lock step progresion. The eight response I lay out are to allow people to have a basic understanding of how there goverment is responding to the threat and show what options they may take to increase there efforts in fighting terror and to show what the limits of these responses may be. Step One Calling a terrorist a terrorist. This is first step in fighting terrorists until you make this step no real action can be taken to combat it. The second part of this is acepting fact that you cant deal with terrorists. If you wish to amke deals with terrorists I recomend that you not call them terrorists as it will make striking a deal with them harder. If you strike deals with terrorist on other then there surrender you wont be able to take any other action because to do so will cause the terrorists your dealing with to attack you to prevent you making any effort to oppose them. Once you accept these two facts you have taken your first step into the war. The problem with this as a lone response to terror is that it does nothing to stop are prevent terror attacks. ------------- Step Two the Police response. In this step a goverment will treat terror like any other crimnal activty after a terror action is taken they will investgate the act and atempt to find people who carried it out and apply aproriate crimnal justice response. This level of response is what most non national levels of goverment are limited to they simply lack the authority are means to respond above this level to terror. This level of response also protects peoples rights as any response above this level will involve some impingment on peoples rights. The down side of this response is that it is reactive only it does not stop the terrorist before they attack and in age of Madrid and 9/11 attacks waiting for terrorists to murder 200 to 3000 people before goverment takes action is not acceptable to goverment are public. ------------- Step Three Monitoring potential terrorists. In this step the goverment atempts to stop terror by watching people are group that they beleave have possability of being are launching a terrorist action. The goal is to be there before they can launch a terrorist action are find some other crimnal activity the persons are group is involved in and use that to remove them as a threat. This activity has advantage over step two in that it has chance of stoping the terrorists before they attack. The downside of this step is that it requires allowing goverment to monitor people who have not yet comitted a crimnal action. Also it can begin to tie up large amounts of people to monitor people for long periods of time reducing people open to look for new threats. ------------- Step Four the Security response. This step is rather large and includes many different actions it maybe better in future to split this into more then one step but as for now I think keeping it as one step makes sense. The goal of this step is to prevent terrorist action by intercepting them at there point of attack. There are many methods of this including both police and legal action to block terrorists. Some of responses of this step are. Placing metal detectors at airports. Border Patrol and Customs. Placing Police on planes and trains Using imgration law to deport forgion extremeists. Using Laws to prevent Terrorist support activitys. These actions are made to reduce the chance of sucessful terrorist action being taken. The downside of this aproach is that it involves a pervasive reduction in right unlike step three that just reduces rights for the potential terrorists step four has effect of reducing everyones rights to a certain degree. A second downside of this aproach is its high cost you end up deploying a army of security to atempt this response. Lastly is problem of soft targets if you make planes secure then terrorists attack trians if you secure them they go after buses. In end there is no ability to secure every point of attack not enough people and not enough money and most people would no accept the loss of rights to try and implement this step at every point of attack. ------------ Step Five External monitoring. Up tell now the steps have all been taken inside the country. The problem being most terrorists groups are trans national to some extent even ones that are considerd local probaly have off shore bank acounts and weapons sources along with other activitys. This is also first step where a goverment begins

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Green Dragon RE:Logic of the War on Terror. 3/20/2004 2:33:59 PM

Just wanted to post my two cents on WoT. Siddar Worth more than 2c once the grammar & typos are corrected ;) I liked it a lot Ta.

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celebrim RE:Logic of the War on Terror. 3/21/2004 7:04:22 PM

Very nice. Well thought out. Comprehensive. I'd say that its only major failing was that all of that ought to be self-evident except that apparantly it isn't to some people. I've been pleased with the multi-faceted approach taken by the Bush administration. The approach has reaped success on several levels. For all their attempts to distance themselves from Bush, my gut instinct tells me that the Kerry group is smart enough to realize that a full spectrum approach is needed and is running 'anti-war' simply to get elected. Of course, its hard to pin down what Kerry really believes because Kerry has a statement tailored to every opinion, but my suspicion is that when he talks about needing a broad spectrum responce he's quoting advisors who do realize the obvious - that you can't (as you put it) 'pigeon hole' your government into one particular approach. So when he claims that he'll fight the war on terror in a multi-faceted way I believe him, and ignore the self-obviously stupid lie that Bush isn't fighting the war on terror in a multi-level way. My fear though is that by running anti-war that he either intends to take steps 7 and 8 off the table, or else he will find himself without the political capital to undertake steps 7 and 8 even if he wanted to because he's offending all the nominally 'pro-war' crowd and they won't trust him to do so. Either way, he could end up ham-stringing the war on terror and or create the appearance of appeasing terrorists and/or retreating (which would dangerously ennable them). In the mean time, keep thinking for yourself.

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jastayme3 RE:Logic of the War on Terror. 4/26/2004 3:02:43 AM

I dissagree on the not deal with terrorists. I think we can make short-term deals with terrorists if we are careful about our own prestiege. Example: the Warriors of Whatever kidnap someone and demand that we free ten of their own held captive. Response: we abduct 11 of them and say:"here's your exchange" If they are not responsive we hang those and kidnap another 11, then go through the process again

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