determined
youngvanwinkle wrote this in a comment in wbwolf's LJ, which I can't reply to directly...so I'll reply here. (Regarding recent comments about writing replies here instead as comments to the journal entries: if I could reply to the comment, I would.)We can't win the war on terror fighting it the way we are now, as a traditional war against nations. All we're doing is playing into the terrorists' hands. The only way to combat terror successfully is to remove the support they get from their countries' citizens; that is, the only way to truly prevent terror attacks is to remove the reasons that the public of those countries support them. And what we're doing does exactly the opposite of that.
This boils down to a simple statement: We can't beat them, so we might as well surrender. To that, I can only politely reply, BULLSHIT!!
Giving terrorists what they want is a recipe for more terror. As people see that terrorism gets the desired results, they will engage in more of it, and more, until they've gained everything they could possibly hope to want.
The only real answer to terror is to stamp it out ruthlessly whenever and wherever it occurs, and destroy anyone and anything that supports it. This can't be done by governments acting alone, but a vigilant, armed citizenry can do it. Yes, this means allowing the average, law-abiding American to arm himself, including aboard airliners and other places likely to be attacked by terrorists. If a terrorist knows that he's likely to get blown away before being able to turn the deaths of Americans into his own special political statement, he'll think twice about trying.
