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Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla
The annoying thing about our enemies is they don't have a nation to look out for. This makes targeting difficult -- and nuclear weapons particularly tempting to them. What really got us outgeneraled early in this war was a want of good HUMINT -- it will be the personal kind of scouting and intel that wins us this war.
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The fact that ouor enemies dont have a nation is a reason why many experts believe that a militry response is not the most effective.
The Rand Corp, a conservative DoD connected think tank, addressed the issue in a recent report:
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[A recent RAND research effort sheds light on this issue by investigating how terrorist groups have ended in the past. By analyzing a comprehensive roster of terrorist groups that existed worldwide between 1968 and 2006, the authors found that most groups ended because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they negotiated a settlement with their governments. Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory.
These findings suggest that the U.S. approach to countering al Qa'ida has focused far too much on the use of military force. Instead, policing and intelligence should be the backbone of U.S. efforts.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_br...51/index1.html
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UG..you might also recall several NIEs over the last few years that concluded that our Iraq invasion/occupation and our actions at GITMO have created a "cause celebre" for terrorism recruitment.
The military is not always the answer in counterting terrorism and forging new democracies.