-- James A. Donald:
Permanent holy war in Iraq would keep them busy and out of mischief WITHOUT permanent large involvement from American military.
Steve Thompson
True, but there's a question of the waste of resources and man-years that would come from such a circumstance.
All the oil money has been wasted, most of the humans in the middle east have suffered poverty, ignorance, lack of freedom and the unproductive absence of useful labor. All my life, people have been proposing to solve this problem. Nearly every American president since 1950 announced some big and expensive initiative that would supposedly solve this problem, or make some substantial progress towards a solution. What is your solution?
And then there's the ethical[1] side of the coin: do the (largely financial benefits) that might come from a civil war in Iraq really justify the consequent standard-of-living for the residents of Iraq?
And your remedy for improving the standard of living in the arab world is? James A. Donald:
Plus, of course, they would be pumping oil like mad in order to fund it.
Steve Thompson
Aren't we all about to run out of oil soon anyways?
Forty years or so, according to estimates by the more sane and conventional authorities. James A. Donald:
the people who organize large scale terror can be identified, particularly by locals and coreligionists, which is why they have been dying in large numbers in Afghanistan.
Steve Thompson
Um, what planet are you on?
The planet where the Afghans held an election, in which nearly everybody voted, some of them several times, and the Taliban were unable to carry out any of the threats they made against the voters, which indicates that the Afghans have been pretty efficient in killing Taliban.
The people who, as you say, organize large scale terror tend to be protected by virtue of large bureaucratic firewalls, legislated secrecy, misdirection (smoke and mirrors), and even taboos.
The average Afghan warlord is untroubled by any of this crap. He sees someone who looks suspicious, says "Hey, you don't look like you are from around here. What are you doing?" If he does not like the answers, he brings out his skinning knife, and asks a few more questions. If the answers make him even more unhappy, he hands his skinning knife to the womenfolk, and tells them to take their time.
But perhaps you are not referring to Western terrorists, but are expecting your reader to assume that terrorists always wear turbans, and who generally will live and operate in the Middle-Eastern theatre. Perhaps you have forgotten about the people who planned and executed the operations that helped South-American tyrants form up and train their death- and terror-squads?
The parties that sponsored death squads of Latin America, when victorious, held free and fair elections, which they won, and those they had been fighting lost. The death squads were an response to Soviet sponsored attempts to subjugate, enslave and terrorize Latin America, and when the Soviet Union passed, so did the death squads. It seems most unlikely that Al Quaeda, the Taliban, and the rest, if victorious would hold free and fair elections, or be capable of winning them. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ZM2pY5cDUC+zxrjD6RPpjIIAXWXup9Ea+odfnDAf 4eH4bUjZbBj3uFRzBBaJlvBPdeLJxSaUyk6w48C2Z