Quote:
Originally Posted by slayda
The problem is identifying the enemy. In the past the enemy was more or less confined to a geographical area. With terrorists, they could be your next door neighbor who goes to your church (read church as any religious assembly place), is the same race as you are, or someone completely different. They don't wear signs saying "I am a terrorist". This makes it very difficult to determine the enemy. If it were not so then they would not be so terrifying. To label all of some class as the enemy because they are different from you, just generates more terror and Ricky said above. There is no easy answer. Maybe there is no answer at all, but being the type of person I am, I will continue to search for one, at least for myself.
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That's indeed part of the problem.
I have an old friend who thinks Bush seriously missed the boat after 9/11 by not calling for a declaration of war. Interesting idea, but a declaration of war against whom? War is normally considered a conflict between nations, and that's not what this is.
The same old friend believes that this isn't really about us at all: what we are seeing is essentially a civil war in the middle east between moderate and fundamentalist factions of Islam. We simply happen to be caught in the middle. I think he may be on to something.
Ultimately, I think terrorism will be addressed by the folks who live over there. Terrorism requires some level of support from the local population. If the terrorists make life difficult enough where they come from, that support may dry up.
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Dennis