Single best counter-terrorism policy or action

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wildcat Israeli Counter Hamas Strategy 3/24/2004 9:16:44 PM

I'm not convinced that this is an "eye for an eye" strategy. It may be that this is more like the strategy the US government took in it's fight against organized crime. That is, targeting leadership to include planners, organizers, sources of income, etc. so as to damage terrorist organizations ability to conduct "sophisticated" operations. A possible(likely?) consequence is the fragmentation of the terrorist organizations into more independent cells whose actions are less controlled by some sort of central authority. So now you've got something much like the Internet. The fundamental design concept of the Internet is decentralization. This decentralization allows it to absorb failures and attacks(DoS, worms, downed routers, etc.) while continuing to function albeit with reduced efficiency. Assuming that you can ?cut off the head? of terrorist organizations and they do ?splinter?, How do you effectively counter the many cells? The underlying assumption would be that effective planners, organizers, fund raisers could be ?taken out? at a rate such that they could not be replaced. At least, not replaced by individuals of the same skill level. As the ?critical? positions are filled with less and less effective individuals, they would be more and more vulnerable to intelligence activities as they would be more apt to make mistakes. These intelligence activities could be geared towards infiltration, assassination, attack prevention, etc. You could also reasonably expect that police/intelligence investigations after terrorist attacks would bear more fruit. Will this work? I don't know. The FBI seems to have had success with this strategy when applied to the mafia. Granted the FBI's battlefield was(is) courts not assassinations, military strikes,ect. but the main idea is the same the only difference being the tools in which it is waged. Now it is true that the mafia is motivated more by greed, desire to stay out of prison and to stay alive than the jihadist. At times, there seems to be no end to the number of jihadist ready to give their life to take the lives of others. Undoubtedly there will continue to be attacks but hopefully the sophistication required to perform ?mega? attacks will be destroyed. The hope would also be that over time smaller scale attacks would decrease in both destruction and frequency. What minimum frequency of terrorist attacks is it possible to achieve with this strategy? Is this minimum sufficiently low so as to allow for true dialog? In my opinion, these are the questions that the Israeli government would ask themselves. It appears that they concluded that this minimum could be achieved following this strategy. The only certainty that I can see here is that terrorist organizations that desire to destroy Israel or desire a Palestinian state alongside Israel as the 1st step in the destruction of Israel need to be dealt with and this strategy directed against those organizations seems valid. I wouldn't classify it as an ?eye for an eye? strategy

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shawn RE:Single best counter-terrorism policy or action 3/24/2004 9:34:31 PM

Blast! You beat me to being the first poster on this thread! I simply couldn't think of anything to post... I think the best counter-terrorist tactic is to not get into a situation that causes terrorism to occur in the first place. Now, not being an apologist or anything, but I think a lot of deaths could have been avoided if many politicians had the courage to adopt a more moderate approach to some of their policies. For example, if Israel used the lands it occupied in 1967 for an immediate 'land-for-peace' deal. I've read many accounts that that was the original intent, but due to the blazing success of the Six-Day War, the hardliners in Israeli politics got their agenda approved. Trading the Sinai and West Bank back to Egypt and Jordan in 1968 would possibily not only have avoided the Yom Kipur War, but most likely the rise of the PLO as well. We know now that Sadat was far more reasonable than Nasser, and did try to reach a diplomatic soultion prior to 1973. Its a disgrace that two decades later, when Barak (a highly decorated counter-terrorist unit commander) offered a similar deal to Arafat, which amounted to 95% of Palestinean demands, Arafat turned it down... It can also be claimed that the basing of American troops in Saudi Arabia was a major cause of the Al Queada's anti-US stance. Apart from the King Khalid AFB being one of the most advanced air bases in the Gulf region, I always wondered why the US didn't pull its forces out of Saudi soon after GW1 and concentrate them in Kuwait and the other countries of the UAE. From a hardline Islamic prospective, basing Christian American troops in Saudi, so close to Mecca, is akin to them of basing Mongol horse archers around the Vatican...

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shawn RE:Israeli Counter Hamas Strategy 3/24/2004 9:39:04 PM

Israel has always had a policy of killing terrorist leaders. The thing is that they used to do it a bit less 'overtly', such as the 1973 Spring of Youth operation against three top PLO leaders. Now they've been blowing people up in broad daylight, and killing bystanders and children while they do it. The latest 'hit' on Yassin is in my opinion, going to backfire on them badly. I think they've just poured naplam onto the fires of Intafatah, and there may very well be another general uprising amongst the Palestineans. How this helps to acheive a peace settlement, I don't really know.

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wildcat RE:Israeli Counter Hamas Strategy 3/24/2004 9:47:14 PM

Well... You're correct that almost anything could happen because of this assasination. There are just too many variables and to many unknowns to predict with a high degree of accuracy what would happen. To make it easier to analyze let's ignore that for now and just concentrate on the strategy(we could add the other issues in later & re-test). So just from the perspective of the strategy do you feel that the plan would work?

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Mark F Economic growth 3/24/2004 10:21:23 PM

Want to end terrorism? Get the Middle-East out of the Middle Ages and make those nations more prosperous. Poor kids with no future and no hope make great recruits for zealots of all kinds.

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Roman RE:Single best counter-terrorism policy or action 3/24/2004 10:23:02 PM

Indeed! I must confess that I too was overwhelmed by a sudden urge to be the first to post in this thread. ;) I think you are partially correct about the importance of moderation. There is fear in the West of 'appeasement' because of obvious historic references, but sometimes 'appeasement' can actually work. The problem is disentangling the situations where it is likely to work and when it is merely going to fuel more demands due to perception of your lack of will to fight the other side may acquire. Determining this is exceedingly difficuly.

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wildcat RE:Single best counter-terrorism policy or action 3/24/2004 10:28:55 PM

Interesting. Can you provide an example of "good appeasement"?

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Roman RE:Single best counter-terrorism policy or action 3/24/2004 10:34:03 PM

"Interesting. Can you provide an example of "good appeasement"" Sure. Great Britain more or less appeased the USA during much of the 19th century. Had it not done so, there would undoubtedly have been major hostilities between the two countries, which would almost certainly result in long term rivalry. Since Britain was willing to appease the US, however, the outstanding issues between them were resolved (mostly in US favour) and the way was eventually opened for cooperation and 'friendship', which lasts to this day.

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shawn RE:Single best counter-terrorism policy or action 3/24/2004 11:06:16 PM

Simple... The Camp David accords that lead to the return of the Sinai to Egypt in 1979. Israel not only got international recognition from Egypt, but also a total end of any hostilities between Egypt and Israel. With Egypt 'out of the picture' no other Arab nation had the willpower, or military power, to try another invasion of Israel. And Sadat paid for this with his life...

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friend2all RE:Single best counter-terrorism policy or action 3/24/2004 11:48:56 PM

I'd say that hunting down a terrorist group that engages in attacking you to the ends of the earth and eradicating them is a pretty good strategy (i.e. Afghanistan). Note how quickly the new leader of Hamas backpedalled from the hastily made threats that had been made against the US earlier. They know that a threat against the US is an open invitation for our undivided attention, which they most certainly do not want.

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ilpars Assasination and modern countries 3/25/2004 2:38:47 AM

Assasination should not be a way of modern nations. It only gives our enemies validation to attack our leaders. Abdullah Ocalan as a leader of PKK is responsible for thousands of death in Turkey. Our government choose to capture him alive in spite of this. And that was not easy. Turkish government deployed Turkish army in Syrian government to send Ocalan away or face the consequences. Ocalan then went to Greece but understanding how much Turkey is serious about the subject they sent him to Africa. At there CIA (although USA declined their help even before start of the rumour of it) helped Turkey to achieve an understanding with that African nation. Than one of our special force squads captured him without a single shot. Assasination a sick old man while leaving a temple while killing or wounding possible innocent bystanders is not good. Israel was cabaple to do something with more finese to achieve same resullt. They chosed to do a public execution. You can expect a suicide attempt to Sharon very soon. Which will be worse for everyone.

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ilpars RE:Assasination and modern countries 3/25/2004 2:43:00 AM

I said "Turkish government deployed Turkish army in Syrian government to send Ocalan away or face the consequences." Correction: Turkish government deployed Turkish army near Syrian border and gave Syrian government options to send Ocalan away or face the consequences.

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shawn RE:Assasination and modern countries 3/26/2004 1:17:58 AM

I gotta agree that HAMAs and the rest of them are going to be gunning for Sharon, but when has that ever stopped him? You must admit, Sharon has been remarkably consistent throughout his miltary and political career, he's always been a right wing Zionist, and after the Palestineans killed the Israeli Tourism Minister a few years back, you can bet that he doesn't go anywhere without security (probably Sayaret Markhel - the out and out best counter-terrorist unit in the world) Arafat's biggest mistake in rebuking Barak's offer and starting the Intafatah because of Sharon's Temple Mount visit was that it got Sharon the Israeli Prime Ministry. Pure idiocy. Reject favourable terms, get the guy willing to deal with you fired, and get your greatest enemy for over two decades to become PM!

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northernguy RE:Israeli Counter Hamas Strategy..shawn.. 3/27/2004 6:48:07 PM

shawn writes: quote How this helps to acheive a peace settlement, I don't really know. endquote What peace settlement would that be? Northernguy

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gf0012-aust Assasination and modern countries - Ilpars 3/27/2004 7:20:23 PM

I'll play devils advocate here. "Correction: Turkish government deployed Turkish army near Syrian border and gave Syrian government options to send Ocalan away or face the consequences." deploying troops on a border with an implication that you will engage in cross border pursuit is not provocative? what if syria had called turkeys bluff? "hot pursuit" is a debatable but permissible/legitimate tactic, assuming that the rest on international legal provisions have been dealt with - its certainly questionable if you haven't declared war on the host, and it's certainly questionable if no state of hostilities has been declared. It's bordering on the political/military solution of the childrens story "the 3 little pigs". ;) Any Syrian complicity (to house Ocalan) by ommission (as opposed to commission) would have made a Turkish cross border pursuit into Syria somewhat contentious.

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