Originally posted by Azrael
I realy pitty those who do not even try to ask WHY there is so much terror and pain in the world. i only hear them all shouting "we must not accept terrorism, we must fight terrorism, we must kill all terrorists". THAT is what i REALY call naive - not the tree hugging hippies.

I think you're half right. One of my main criticisms of the Bush administration (and conservative America in general) is that they really don't think or care about how most terrorists became terrorists in the first place. They see changing US policy as "giving in" to the terrorists (something that admitantly, shouldn't be done), but they also fail to realize that US policy has infact created much of the problem, and certain areas of US policy should be chanced, not to capitulate to the terrorists, but because the plolicy was wrong.

About 3,000 years ago, Sun Tzu hit the nail right on the head in regards to war and how it should be waged. He pointed out that war sometimes has to be fought, and that turning away in such times is detremental to a nation, but so is fighting a war that doesn't need to be fought. He also pointed out that the war should be fought to be won because drawn out conflicts are costly and tend to fail and backfire. Sitting down and really looking at the history books shows these principals to be absolutely correct, right up to today.

A quick, decisive war in Iraq followed by a positive reconstruction of Iraq will work to eliminate terrorism (Osama bin Laden often points to the plight of the Iraqi people when justifying his Jihad against the West), and a potential source of very nasty weapons for terrorists. A long, drawn out war with heavy civilian casualties will make all of the above worse, but by that same token, doing nothing is already making the situation worse.