A Law Enforcement Problem - A Law Enforcement Solution
Published by BG on Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 7:07 PM.Since it came up in conversation today...
Orcinus
If you've got 100 al Qaeda operatives in Beirut, you don't roll Humvees in and engage the Lebanese army as your solution.
Terrorist acts are acts of violence not perpetrated by a state. An act of violence perpetrated by the state is an act of war, not of terrorism. One is an act of lawbreaking, the other an attempt to provoke a state to respond.
Terrorism is a law enforcement problem, not a war problem. You can't throw 10,000 troops with heavy weaponry at a few hundred guys who look like and walk amongst the citizens of Karachi - unless, of course, you're just looking to indiscriminately wipe out as many foreigners as possible, proactively solving your problem of both terrorism and the future spread of terrorism. Ugh.
Obviously, a state that is clearly aiding and abetting - CLEARLY aiding and abetting, like Afghanistan - may need convincing in a heavy-handed sort of way to let us go after al Qaeda, but war with Afghanistan is clearly not the same thing as defeating al Qaeda.
Orcinus
Any kind of serious War on Terror needs to have the flexibility to respond proportionately and nimbly to various terrorist threats as they manifest themselves, and in this respect a military emphasis is simply too musclebound to be effective. A comprehensive approach will emphasize intelligence and law enforcement -- especially global law enforcement, the very concept of which is anathema to the Bush administration -- while reserving its military options, fraught as they are with multiple collateral hazards, solely for the rare circumstances that warrant them.
If you've got 100 al Qaeda operatives in Beirut, you don't roll Humvees in and engage the Lebanese army as your solution.
Terrorist acts are acts of violence not perpetrated by a state. An act of violence perpetrated by the state is an act of war, not of terrorism. One is an act of lawbreaking, the other an attempt to provoke a state to respond.
Terrorism is a law enforcement problem, not a war problem. You can't throw 10,000 troops with heavy weaponry at a few hundred guys who look like and walk amongst the citizens of Karachi - unless, of course, you're just looking to indiscriminately wipe out as many foreigners as possible, proactively solving your problem of both terrorism and the future spread of terrorism. Ugh.
Obviously, a state that is clearly aiding and abetting - CLEARLY aiding and abetting, like Afghanistan - may need convincing in a heavy-handed sort of way to let us go after al Qaeda, but war with Afghanistan is clearly not the same thing as defeating al Qaeda.
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