Posted on Nov 26, 2013
SFC Motor Transport Operator
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Posted in these groups: 6262122778 997339a086 z Politics
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CW2 Joseph Evans
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No. You can't win a war against an idea or a concept. The war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war against communism, the war on terror...
Every time we launch a National movement based on war as a metaphor, we set ourselves up to lose. Ideas as an enemy is never a good thing, because we stand, as a nation, staring across a battlefield with the idea that no quarter shall be given, that there is no compromise.
We have painted freedom fighters as terrorists, not because they are terrorists, but because they fight for a freedom that is at odds with our western ideals. It is why we lost in Vietnam, we wanted to westernize the region, they wanted self-determination. Self-determination, they same thing we fought for in the Revolutionary War and again in the Civil War, yet we choose to impose our will on others at this late date.
We also run around shooting one "terrorist" and anger his family at what was unjustly done. Malala Yousafzai said it best "drone attacks are fueling terrorism."
We have gotten ourselves into several bad situations, many of which are based on ego or greed, and we will not be able to solve them if we continue to use the same thought process that got us into those situations.
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CMC Robert Young
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"Wars of Blood and Faith" by Ralph Peters outlines why the "take territory and hold it followed by nation building" theory of WWII is so out of step with our current situation. We will never kill enough people to quell an ideology. This is not about national conquest, but about theology and culture. The best we can ever hope to do is to be one step ahead of the next problem; mitigate the second and third order effects, and fight the enemy someplace beside America.
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LTC Program Manager
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How do you define "winning"? You can't kill your way out of this war. For everyone you kill you create two more.

We have killed a lot of people but I don't think we are any better off today than we were on September the 12th 2001, in fact quite the opposite.
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SFC Motor Transport Operator
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Great point Sir.
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