War Or Terrorism

When someone is lobbing rockets at you, it is understandable that you want to strike back. Unfortunately in this day and age, it doesn't work. It use to, but not any longer. Countries can no longer act as individuals would.

If someone hits me, I will hit them back. That's pretty much human nature. You protect yourself. Countries use to be able to do that also. You attack me, I will attack you back and if I am stronger, I will probably, but not always, win. Warfare was like personal conflict -- one person striking another person, one gun shooting at another gun.

Warfare is no longer like that. Technology has advanced to the point where one person can inflict a lot of damage on a whole lot of other people. It is no longer one-on-one. It is often one-on-many. That is what has happened in Iraq and that is what is happening in the Gaza-Israel conflict. One person, or a small group of people are inflicting harm on a large group of other people. It is called terrorism.

Terrorism is not war. War is between governments. You win a war by toppling the other government and usually, but not always, occupying the offending country. Terrorism is a tactic. It's purpose is to change your behavior, not defeat your government and take over your country -- irrespective of what they say.

You don't defeat terrorism with war. Look at Iraq and earlier, Vietnam. The Iraq war was over in a couple of weeks. The government fell and we occupied the country -- and we created a terrorist condition. Terrorism has thrived in Iraq because we continued to treat it as a war.

To me, it looks like Israel is doing the same thing in Gaza. Countries need to react to terrorism differently than individuals do to attacks on themselves. They have got to get to the root cause of the terrorism. A war-type attack may buy some time, but it does not solve the problem and, in fact, probably will fuel the terrorism even more.

So what is the solution, you ask? That's the million dollar question. Hopefully there are bigger minds than mine working on it. Current actions are not working. It will take more international cooperation, more intelligence sharing, more police work.

More war and bigger weapons are not the solution.