The terrorist nature vol 3

This post is continued form a eariler post where I said:

As shown above the battle against terrorism is a wildly different from the communist threat, and requires a new set of tools, which is what the bush administration has done.

In the next post I will go into the nature of terrorists, what terrorist need to survive, and the proper strategy that we should take against terrorists.

I am picking up this line of thought because I remembered I had not finished it when I read this part of an email exchange I posted about.

On the other, we have lost the support of any and all moderate Arabs just when we need them the most, and the instability Bush has brought to the Middle East severely jeopardizes our future relationship with the Saudis to satisfy our oil needs.

I will come back to this, but first let me continue on the nature of terrorists.

Nature of Terrorists

Terrorist, the tactics they use, and the ideology that they push acts in almost on a viral model. It lays dormant for a time, then you see an upswing in the number of terrorist acts, amount of terrorist chatter, or terrorist movement.

So waiting to counter a terrorist attack is a little like waiting for a herpes or Ebola outbreak. In the herpes case you can only treat the symptoms. In the case of the Ebola virus, the outbreak (terrorist act) has killed the original individuals with the virus, so you are unable to trace the spread of the virus back to its origin.

Additionally the connections between terrorists resemble a map. Each terror cell is a city, and there are well-defined paths between the cells. Some of the terrorist act as go betweens transferring material goods, commands, or even money between the cells. Material goods and commands follow the strictest paths (because a terrorist cell must have a communications protocol to ensure that it has not been found out). The money is a little harder to trace, because of the varied ways that money can be transferred.


We have a very good definition of how our terror groups work, and determine what terrorist groups need to survive is the next step. In order to grow, plan, train, and seek sponsors our terror groups must have a safe secure place in which to incubate. Early on it was Sudan and a little later on it was Afghanistan. Our job is to figure out where they are going to go next, beat them there, and they squeeze them between our forces.

The next logical place for these terror groups to go would be a country or region that is friendly to their cause. Of countries in the world, there are several in Africa that don't have a strong enough boarder to keep the terrorists out. Iraq would have been a good choice because of its central location, but we took that country out. Iran or Syria would be better options than countries in Iraq. They already have a base of support there, they can blend in with the populace, they speak the lanugage, both has sea ports in order to help the movement of personnel, information, material goods, and commands. Also, the two countries are close to the area in which they are now. The less they have to travel, the better.



Our strategy for handling the terrorist is to remove their habit, counter outbreaks, and also intercept key personnel in order to follow the links to the chain.

This is where Iraq plays a pivotal role; Iraq lies in-between Iran and Syria. Iraq can secure its own boarder and prevent the movement of people and goods between two terror friendly countries. If you don't think Iraq has anything to do with the war on terror, you either don't understand the nature of the terror organizations or you are content to try to counter every outbreak as it happens. In order to remove the virus, you must remove the habit in which it breeds. A free Iraq will help us accomplish all three of the goals listed above.

Now back to the beginning of this post
On the other, we have lost the support of any and all moderate Arabs just when we need them the most, and the instability Bush has brought to the Middle East severely jeopardizes our future relationship with the Saudis to satisfy our oil needs.

People assume that instability is bad. I will agree that it is not good for the general population, governments, and businesses in the Middle East. Though it is also bad for the terror groups, creating instability lessens the ability of groups to plan, mobilize, and train. In addition, when an instable environment is created, groups such as the UN, NATO, and individual countries in the region will attempt to create stability through removing the instable forces. The forces causing the instability also happen to be the same forces causing America problems.

cube