6 ms·

Of the two methods currently being used to deal with the militant Islamic fanatics, the 'War On Terror' has only really achieved in causing mass terror amongst

Of the two methods currently being used to deal with the militant Islamic fanatics, the 'War On Terror' has only really achieved in causing mass terror amongst our own people and imprison hundreds of innocent people because our government's criteria for 'wrong place and wrong time' were basically Afghanistan and post-invasion. However the allegedly Israeli approach causes virtually no terror to our own people (in fact it appears to instill the exact opposite of terror), it has no collateral damage and only a minor amount of innocents get caught in the cross hairs. What I'm wondering is if the 'Israeli' approach to militant Islamiscs the better approach? IE is it getting the job done at a better tax-payer cost and a better ethical cost (less young soldiers dead, less innocents wrongly imprisoned and less collateral damage vs. a wrong target).

barrkel 17y ago
The collateral damage includes political fallout, damage to bilateral relations with friendly countries, and an increase in the risk of being treated as a pariah.
- pyre 17y ago
  Are you talking about the collateral damage of (e.g.) invading Iraq or Afghanistan? Or are you talking about the collateral damage of using hit squads to take out terrorist leaders?
  - mshafrir 17y ago
    The collateral damage of sanctioned assassinations.
    - ghfdrvtsyup 17y ago
      exactly. Is it worse in the eyes of the world to say that you're 'fighting a war on terror' and invade a country or secretly kill high-ranking enemy officials for years before finally getting caught? The second is more expedient, but if you kill the wrong person at the wrong time, you can probably cause yourself a lot more harm than good. Imagine if the US killed Saddam Hussein by poisoning his breakfast!
  - barrkel 17y ago
    GP seemed to be trying to say that targeted assassinations didn't have collateral damage. I was trying to say that it did.
zzleeper 17y ago
The thing is who decides who gets killed and who not. You could argue that Bush caused the massacre of thousands of Iraqis, or something similar for past Israeli leaders. Does that mean that we can assassinate them? W/out even a fair trial? Once you go through that path, things get scaringly fuzzy. It reminds me of the idea -popular in Latin America- that there are bad dictators and good dictators (pro markets, etc.). I've seen people that supposedly like freedom and democracy take a very pragmatic approach, being happy under the rule of Pinochet/Fujimori/etc.
- berntb 17y ago
  Good/bad dictators is a well known debate. "King" is an old term for "[military] dictator". One bad problem is that most every king/dictator made certain to put his own relatives in positions of power. That means that the leadership competence in future generations will be very varied. From history studies, somewhere between 25%-75% of my country's royalty were total asshats. When you have a fixed incompetent leadership that is very hard to change, then employees/citizens/etc will suffer. There are more problems, like that you just can't tell an absolute ruler, which has been brought up for the job, all the things he needs to hear. [Edit: A dictator can be said to have an alternative version of "Kill your darlings", when someone complains about his worst ideas...] Edit: To sum, I'm with Churchill on this: "... democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Edit: Some points of grammar.
  - tome 17y ago
    Interesting HN comment about that Churchill quote: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=571797 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=571797
    - berntb 17y ago
      I've read about that discussion but lacked the energy. :-) (Anyway, your link might have a point in that the inherited dictators might on average be less actively evil than those that crawl to the top of the heap. That seems like arguing that some cancer form has a little bit less mortality than lung cancer. It might be true, but the practical/emotional impact is low.)
mcantelon 17y ago
Targeted assassinations remove problems in organizations, but don't necessary secure territory. Aside from securing territory other upsides of the War on Terror approach are getting to consolidate security at home and using war abroad to funnel money to friendly contractors and black ops front companies. The fate of Al-Quaeda doesn't really matter at they're not a significant threat to the state.
tsally 17y ago
A fair number of innocents get caught in the crosshairs of the Israel. A targeted assassination by Mossad killed the wrong man [1], Palestinian civilians have been used as human shields [2], Amnesty International found that Israeli military checkpoints are a "key cause of high rates of unemployment and poverty" among the Palestinians [3], and a UN report concluded that "there was strong evidence to establish that numerous serious violations of international law, both humanitarian law and human rights law, were committed by Israel during the military operations in Gaza" [4]. To be clear, I'm not taking a side on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Crimes are being committed on both sides daily. The above evidence is presented only to debunk your claim that the Israeli approach "has no collateral damage and only a minor amount of innocents get caught in the cross hairs". That's a rather audacious claim given how messy Israel's struggle with Islamic militants is. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/02/israel1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/02/israel1 [3] http://www.amnesty.no/Web.nsf/e94cc2698ef66716c1256a03006a4d8a/30a889eda4ebbe0cc125700b003c21b4/$FILE/2005%20Report.pdf http://www.amnesty.no/Web.nsf/e94cc2698ef66716c1256a03006a4d... [4] http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32057&Cr=palestin&Cr1 http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32057&Cr=pa...
- Flemlord 17y ago
  Not to justify either method, but that's a few orders of magnitude away from the "war on terror" casualties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
  - tsally 17y ago
    True, but the scale of the war on terror (based on populations of the countries involved) is a few orders of magnitude larger than the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. If you adjust the number of casualties for population, the two numbers become similar. Of course, this comparison is still a naive one, but it's a lot closer to reality than comparing the two conflicts by the raw number of casualties only.
cookiecaper 17y ago
Israel is interested in self-preservation, the United States is interested in imperialism. This is the root difference in the strategies; we stay in Iraq or Afghanistan because our leaders want to establish friendly governments there. If we left, the people would reject the sham governments we've installed and resort back to something that provides their needs, fundamentally, stability and security. It's a privilege and a responsibility to live under what's considered a "free" government, and not everyone can handle that. You can't just waltz in and apply it universally across the globe and expect it to work, especially if the people of these other countries feel it was forced upon them. In these cases, there is too much contention and tribalism among the groups in the constituted nations to allow for a peaceful, useful democratic co-existence, which is one of the main reasons these governments do not form spontaneously in the area. The people there just can't handle that kind of system as it is, whatever your opinion on that system is, either for unwillingness, resentment, or inability, and forcing it only makes the problem worse. You can't take a newborn and try to force it to walk. All that will do is harm the baby physically and harm your relationship psychologically. The capacity just isn't there. Even if you spend lots of money on harnesses and things that keep the baby in a bipedal stance, and cuffs and strings to lift his legs, it's not the same thing, and doing this only stands to worsen the situation overall. If you allow the child to develop these capacities naturally in his own time, everything is good and happy. We have to allow the natural growth of these things. Our puppet governments don't work because the people don't accept them, and they especially will resent anyone who invades their territory to impose a "better way" on them. How would the US feel if China invaded and said, "This is for your own good, so that you can learn the glories of Communism, so that you are free from your oppressive corporatist leaders."? Do you think, even if China is right there, any American will accept that? We would vow ourselves to destroy the invaders. Those in the Middle East do likewise.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  The only alternative to 'sham' governments imposed from outside are 'strong men', Saddam, for all his shortcomings functioned remarkably well in that role as did for instance Tito in former Yugoslavia. Tribal friction needs an equally strong force to overcome it if a country is not to explode into its constituent parts. So if you remove the strong man once he's established terrible stuff can happen, sometimes worse than what the strong man himself did. (Again, for instance Yugoslavia was definitely not the best country in the world to live in under Tito, but it was a lot better than living in a civil war).
jsz0 17y ago
This should be the long term goal of US security policy. Israel has been dealing with terrorism long enough to have developed an optimal strategy. I think the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan reflect that US intelligence and covert operations just weren't ready to deal with Islamic terrorism so we had to fall back to conventional warfare to prove a point. If there's anything good to come out of this at least we have even more proof that fighting conventional wars even on a relatively small scale is just too costly, destructive and ineffective even for a super power. Hopefully it gives the whole world less incentive to escalate into war. It seems as though over the generations we're heading in that direction. Wars are generally getting smaller and less deadly as technology actually allows them to become bigger and more deadly. That's some reason for optimism.
Estragon 17y ago
The problem with that, from the perspective of the instigators of the "War on Terror," is that you don't get to show off what a big dick you are when you pull off an effective intelligence operation. Suskind's book The One-Percent Doctrine is very revealing in this regard. There were effective intelligence operations against Al Qaeda, but the fruits of them were repeatedly squandered for egotistical reasons. In one case, the CIA decapitated the main financial institution used by Al Qaeda and put their own guy in charge of it. This really shone a light on Al Qaeda endeavors for a time, but the US government kept giving the insights they gleaned from it to the Israelis (with no obvious quid pro quo) and the Israelis kept using those insights to solve their own internal problems until people twigged and started finding more secure ways to move their money around.

barrkel 17y ago

The collateral damage includes political fallout, damage to bilateral relations with friendly countries, and an increase in the risk of being treated as a pariah.

pyre 17y ago
Are you talking about the collateral damage of (e.g.) invading Iraq or Afghanistan? Or are you talking about the collateral damage of using hit squads to take out terrorist leaders?
- mshafrir 17y ago
  The collateral damage of sanctioned assassinations.
  - ghfdrvtsyup 17y ago
    exactly. Is it worse in the eyes of the world to say that you're 'fighting a war on terror' and invade a country or secretly kill high-ranking enemy officials for years before finally getting caught? The second is more expedient, but if you kill the wrong person at the wrong time, you can probably cause yourself a lot more harm than good. Imagine if the US killed Saddam Hussein by poisoning his breakfast!
- barrkel 17y ago
  GP seemed to be trying to say that targeted assassinations didn't have collateral damage. I was trying to say that it did.

zzleeper 17y ago

The thing is who decides who gets killed and who not. You could argue that Bush caused the massacre of thousands of Iraqis, or something similar for past Israeli leaders. Does that mean that we can assassinate them? W/out even a fair trial? Once you go through that path, things get scaringly fuzzy. It reminds me of the idea -popular in Latin America- that there are bad dictators and good dictators (pro markets, etc.). I've seen people that supposedly like freedom and democracy take a very pragmatic approach, being happy under the rule of Pinochet/Fujimori/etc.

berntb 17y ago
Good/bad dictators is a well known debate. "King" is an old term for "[military] dictator". One bad problem is that most every king/dictator made certain to put his own relatives in positions of power. That means that the leadership competence in future generations will be very varied. From history studies, somewhere between 25%-75% of my country's royalty were total asshats. When you have a fixed incompetent leadership that is very hard to change, then employees/citizens/etc will suffer. There are more problems, like that you just can't tell an absolute ruler, which has been brought up for the job, all the things he needs to hear. [Edit: A dictator can be said to have an alternative version of "Kill your darlings", when someone complains about his worst ideas...] Edit: To sum, I'm with Churchill on this: "... democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Edit: Some points of grammar.
- tome 17y ago
  Interesting HN comment about that Churchill quote: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=571797 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=571797
  - berntb 17y ago
    I've read about that discussion but lacked the energy. :-) (Anyway, your link might have a point in that the inherited dictators might on average be less actively evil than those that crawl to the top of the heap. That seems like arguing that some cancer form has a little bit less mortality than lung cancer. It might be true, but the practical/emotional impact is low.)

mcantelon 17y ago

Targeted assassinations remove problems in organizations, but don't necessary secure territory. Aside from securing territory other upsides of the War on Terror approach are getting to consolidate security at home and using war abroad to funnel money to friendly contractors and black ops front companies. The fate of Al-Quaeda doesn't really matter at they're not a significant threat to the state.

tsally 17y ago

A fair number of innocents get caught in the crosshairs of the Israel. A targeted assassination by Mossad killed the wrong man [1], Palestinian civilians have been used as human shields [2], Amnesty International found that Israeli military checkpoints are a "key cause of high rates of unemployment and poverty" among the Palestinians [3], and a UN report concluded that "there was strong evidence to establish that numerous serious violations of international law, both humanitarian law and human rights law, were committed by Israel during the military operations in Gaza" [4]. To be clear, I'm not taking a side on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Crimes are being committed on both sides daily. The above evidence is presented only to debunk your claim that the Israeli approach "has no collateral damage and only a minor amount of innocents get caught in the cross hairs". That's a rather audacious claim given how messy Israel's struggle with Islamic militants is. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/02/israel1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/02/israel1 [3] http://www.amnesty.no/Web.nsf/e94cc2698ef66716c1256a03006a4d8a/30a889eda4ebbe0cc125700b003c21b4/$FILE/2005%20Report.pdf http://www.amnesty.no/Web.nsf/e94cc2698ef66716c1256a03006a4d... [4] http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32057&Cr=palestin&Cr1 http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32057&Cr=pa...

Flemlord 17y ago
Not to justify either method, but that's a few orders of magnitude away from the "war on terror" casualties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
- tsally 17y ago
  True, but the scale of the war on terror (based on populations of the countries involved) is a few orders of magnitude larger than the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. If you adjust the number of casualties for population, the two numbers become similar. Of course, this comparison is still a naive one, but it's a lot closer to reality than comparing the two conflicts by the raw number of casualties only.

cookiecaper 17y ago

Israel is interested in self-preservation, the United States is interested in imperialism. This is the root difference in the strategies; we stay in Iraq or Afghanistan because our leaders want to establish friendly governments there. If we left, the people would reject the sham governments we've installed and resort back to something that provides their needs, fundamentally, stability and security. It's a privilege and a responsibility to live under what's considered a "free" government, and not everyone can handle that. You can't just waltz in and apply it universally across the globe and expect it to work, especially if the people of these other countries feel it was forced upon them. In these cases, there is too much contention and tribalism among the groups in the constituted nations to allow for a peaceful, useful democratic co-existence, which is one of the main reasons these governments do not form spontaneously in the area. The people there just can't handle that kind of system as it is, whatever your opinion on that system is, either for unwillingness, resentment, or inability, and forcing it only makes the problem worse. You can't take a newborn and try to force it to walk. All that will do is harm the baby physically and harm your relationship psychologically. The capacity just isn't there. Even if you spend lots of money on harnesses and things that keep the baby in a bipedal stance, and cuffs and strings to lift his legs, it's not the same thing, and doing this only stands to worsen the situation overall. If you allow the child to develop these capacities naturally in his own time, everything is good and happy. We have to allow the natural growth of these things. Our puppet governments don't work because the people don't accept them, and they especially will resent anyone who invades their territory to impose a "better way" on them. How would the US feel if China invaded and said, "This is for your own good, so that you can learn the glories of Communism, so that you are free from your oppressive corporatist leaders."? Do you think, even if China is right there, any American will accept that? We would vow ourselves to destroy the invaders. Those in the Middle East do likewise.

jacquesm 17y ago
The only alternative to 'sham' governments imposed from outside are 'strong men', Saddam, for all his shortcomings functioned remarkably well in that role as did for instance Tito in former Yugoslavia. Tribal friction needs an equally strong force to overcome it if a country is not to explode into its constituent parts. So if you remove the strong man once he's established terrible stuff can happen, sometimes worse than what the strong man himself did. (Again, for instance Yugoslavia was definitely not the best country in the world to live in under Tito, but it was a lot better than living in a civil war).

jsz0 17y ago

This should be the long term goal of US security policy. Israel has been dealing with terrorism long enough to have developed an optimal strategy. I think the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan reflect that US intelligence and covert operations just weren't ready to deal with Islamic terrorism so we had to fall back to conventional warfare to prove a point. If there's anything good to come out of this at least we have even more proof that fighting conventional wars even on a relatively small scale is just too costly, destructive and ineffective even for a super power. Hopefully it gives the whole world less incentive to escalate into war. It seems as though over the generations we're heading in that direction. Wars are generally getting smaller and less deadly as technology actually allows them to become bigger and more deadly. That's some reason for optimism.

Estragon 17y ago

The problem with that, from the perspective of the instigators of the "War on Terror," is that you don't get to show off what a big dick you are when you pull off an effective intelligence operation. Suskind's book The One-Percent Doctrine is very revealing in this regard. There were effective intelligence operations against Al Qaeda, but the fruits of them were repeatedly squandered for egotistical reasons. In one case, the CIA decapitated the main financial institution used by Al Qaeda and put their own guy in charge of it. This really shone a light on Al Qaeda endeavors for a time, but the US government kept giving the insights they gleaned from it to the Israelis (with no obvious quid pro quo) and the Israelis kept using those insights to solve their own internal problems until people twigged and started finding more secure ways to move their money around.