8 ms·

1. Take their arguments away from them. Stop invading countries trying to bring democracy, ultimately making things worse. Stop torturing and so on. 2. Take th

1. Take their arguments away from them. Stop invading countries trying to bring democracy, ultimately making things worse. Stop torturing and so on. 2. Take their people away from them. Like other forms of extremists, they need young male identiy-seeking misfits, who have nothing going on for them and want easy answers, somebody who gives them orders and to be part of something bigger. 3. Prosecute them like other criminals, too (with police forces).

optimiz3 11y ago
Police and civil procedure only work in your own sovereign state where everyone plays by the same social contracts and has shared values (mostly). Force necessary to achieve threat elimination and future deterrence work on sovereign adversaries who chose not to play by your rules. Doesn't matter why they don't like you (rightly or wrongly), if they are a violent adversary you will suffer consequences if you do not stop them. If the adversary is reasonable, diplomacy is always a preferable option, but not the most common denominator.
- allendoerfer 11y ago
  And as long as we do not have a world police under the UN (which benefits are itself at least debatable), that's a fact we have to live with. Ignoring it, just makes things worse. You can use the military to sink some pirate ships or to stop Russia from going crazy, but you cannot win a war against guerilla. Every generation has their example war for this but we still keep joining them.
  - optimiz3 11y ago
    There are many ways to win wars against guerillas, but just as guerilla attacks on civilians are incompatible with western values, most of the responses are similarly incompatible.
cm2187 11y ago
Prosecute them? You are going to mail a warrant to a war zone in Syria? Assuming the letter even makes it way to ISIS they will be grateful for the free toilet paper.
- allendoerfer 11y ago
  Syria would not be a war zone if we hadn't used much more "effective" measurements in Iraq before. I do not know what to say to people, who at this point still think, that our military can somehow bring peace to the middle-east after decades of war, thinking "this time is different". Why don't we invade Saudi Arabia, who practices a cruel form of Islam with death-sentences and so on, too? Why don't we abolish them in China or the US? Why don't we focus on Africa or - as a European - Eastern Europe? I am not saying, that ISIS is not bad, I just find the obsession with the Middle East strange, if it is really about their actions that are so horrible, let's stop doing them ourselves first. If you really want to make the world a better place, that should be a much easier goal to achieve.
  - cm2187 11y ago
    The French position in 2002 may have been a bit cynical but would probably have saved lots of life: Saddam Hussein may be a scum-bag but at least he was holding the country together and keeping Sunni and Shia from killing each others. Same for Gaddafi, Al Assad, Ben Ali, etc. That being said all dictators fall or die sooner or later, and a lot of the troubles in the middle-east have more to do about ethnic hatred than about religious extremism. We could possibly have delayed it but perhaps not prevented it.
xorcist 11y ago
> Stop invading countries trying to bring democracy Please drop this pretense. Nobody invades anything to bring democracy. You can't force democracy on people even if you wanted to. Democracy is so much more than just the elections. You invade countries because you have geopolitical interests in the area, and want to gain political or economical influence. It used to be the case that you invaded countries because the territory itself was valuable, but when was the last time you heard invaded people become citizens of the invaders' nation state? These days the cost is calculated and operations carried out are means to an end.
- SinomaSo 11y ago
  Crimea?
  - xorcist 11y ago
    I believe it fits. If they had wanted to annex it they would have done so properly. It's not like any other actor would risk all out war over it. If this had been 300 years ago, it would have played out differently. (The status as autonomous region also bring a whole cadre of complications. I don't know much about it really more than you read in history books.)

optimiz3 11y ago

Police and civil procedure only work in your own sovereign state where everyone plays by the same social contracts and has shared values (mostly). Force necessary to achieve threat elimination and future deterrence work on sovereign adversaries who chose not to play by your rules. Doesn't matter why they don't like you (rightly or wrongly), if they are a violent adversary you will suffer consequences if you do not stop them. If the adversary is reasonable, diplomacy is always a preferable option, but not the most common denominator.

allendoerfer 11y ago
And as long as we do not have a world police under the UN (which benefits are itself at least debatable), that's a fact we have to live with. Ignoring it, just makes things worse. You can use the military to sink some pirate ships or to stop Russia from going crazy, but you cannot win a war against guerilla. Every generation has their example war for this but we still keep joining them.
- optimiz3 11y ago
  There are many ways to win wars against guerillas, but just as guerilla attacks on civilians are incompatible with western values, most of the responses are similarly incompatible.

cm2187 11y ago

Prosecute them? You are going to mail a warrant to a war zone in Syria? Assuming the letter even makes it way to ISIS they will be grateful for the free toilet paper.

allendoerfer 11y ago
Syria would not be a war zone if we hadn't used much more "effective" measurements in Iraq before. I do not know what to say to people, who at this point still think, that our military can somehow bring peace to the middle-east after decades of war, thinking "this time is different". Why don't we invade Saudi Arabia, who practices a cruel form of Islam with death-sentences and so on, too? Why don't we abolish them in China or the US? Why don't we focus on Africa or - as a European - Eastern Europe? I am not saying, that ISIS is not bad, I just find the obsession with the Middle East strange, if it is really about their actions that are so horrible, let's stop doing them ourselves first. If you really want to make the world a better place, that should be a much easier goal to achieve.
- cm2187 11y ago
  The French position in 2002 may have been a bit cynical but would probably have saved lots of life: Saddam Hussein may be a scum-bag but at least he was holding the country together and keeping Sunni and Shia from killing each others. Same for Gaddafi, Al Assad, Ben Ali, etc. That being said all dictators fall or die sooner or later, and a lot of the troubles in the middle-east have more to do about ethnic hatred than about religious extremism. We could possibly have delayed it but perhaps not prevented it.

xorcist 11y ago

> Stop invading countries trying to bring democracy Please drop this pretense. Nobody invades anything to bring democracy. You can't force democracy on people even if you wanted to. Democracy is so much more than just the elections. You invade countries because you have geopolitical interests in the area, and want to gain political or economical influence. It used to be the case that you invaded countries because the territory itself was valuable, but when was the last time you heard invaded people become citizens of the invaders' nation state? These days the cost is calculated and operations carried out are means to an end.

SinomaSo 11y ago
Crimea?
- xorcist 11y ago
  I believe it fits. If they had wanted to annex it they would have done so properly. It's not like any other actor would risk all out war over it. If this had been 300 years ago, it would have played out differently. (The status as autonomous region also bring a whole cadre of complications. I don't know much about it really more than you read in history books.)