| This "strategy that was worked for us against extremists in the past?". If it includes torturing people and imprisoning them with no trials in sight, I don't recall that happening in the past. Same goes for splittting your forces and losing sight of the prime objective in order to go into a country which was at best only tangentially related to the so-called War on Terror (for the record, I'm happy that Saddam's regime is gone). I can't believe that's what you mean.
But thanks for the expected "What would you do" post. Why exactly do you expect me to have the big answer to this whole problem. What I do know is that current policies are actually helping create more fundamentalist fanatics and potetial terrorist recruits. So stopping that would be a good first step. Next step would be focussing on reducing support for the jihadist version of islam, starting with our so-called friends in Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan, but that's a bit of a longer-term project.
Also, it would be good if anti-terror measures at home were less focused on "security theater" (term borrowed from Bruce Schneier), and more on less visible but known effective means, namely lots of highly-trained security people with good knowledge of all sorts of possible threats. Intelligence gathering needs a big boost too, and not from surveilling domestic telephone and internet traffic, but from developing HumInt contacts and gaining allies/friend in the relevant areas and groups. But then, that's hard when you're working hard to alienate most of the world. |
