Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (2030)	7/21/2005 12:53:19 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540784

If...their motivation is increased rather than decreased by harsh repression of their comrades We don't know this, do we?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (2030)	7/24/2005 8:05:13 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 540784

How do you measure success if conventional deterrence doesn't work? I think it has to an extent. If you make terrorist actions risky, both to the terrorist making the attacks and to his supporters you deter some people from becoming terrorists, and you might also make some terrorsits more careful and thus less active. Yes at the same time you can be causing more anger and thus more action. Both factors are at play. It's like dealing with cockroaches in your kitchen by inviting ten people over to stomp on every bug they see. It doesn't affect the bugs breeding in the walls that you don't see and can't reach. Its like using a pesticide that doesn't get all the cockroaches, and that might actually attrack some. Your analogy allows for a weaker positive and a weaker negative effect than the actions the US has taken against terrorism. In your analogy there is little signifigant destruction of the cockroaches, and their "base" is left untouched. OTOH your analogy has no real negative effects. We know that Al Qaeda still has thousands of active followers despite our eliminating so many, That doesn't mean that would not have even more had we not responded forcefully to their actions. If we had looked week and indecicive than the recruting might have been easier for them, and training a large number of recruits would also have been simplier. You are disagreeing with a known result to a tested policy. I am doing no such thing. The policy has been put in effect. We have result X. To actually make a real test of it we would have to have the same starting conditions with a different policy to get result Y and compare the two. While it is easily possible that a better policy (or a better implementation of the same policy) could have made Y better than X, I believe a less forceful policy would have resulted in a worse Y. Its probably impossible to ever really prove either your opinion or mine. Tim