Terrorist growth overtakes U.S. efforts

"Thirty new terrorist organizations have emerged since the September 11, 2001, attacks, outpacing U.S. efforts to crush the threat, said Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism."
"We are not killing them faster than they are being created," Gen. Caslen told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday, warning that the war could take decades to resolve."

Anybody recognize the absurd part in that statement? Not that it could take years, but the implication that it could ever be won. As long as we use a sledgehammer, we're going to create more hostility than we can ever hope to succeed against. Killing, indefinately detaining, and torturing innocent people, will only cause more resentment that grows to hostility, then to violent actions.

It's no mystery why terrorist have multiplied. The question is whether we continue on the same failing course, or work to regain our former standing and trust with the people of the world. Just concentrating on support of friendly governments, or twisting the arms of those who aren't, leaves the people of the world, caught in the middle, suffering.

To be sure, we've captured some terrorists, but the majority of detainees don't appear to be any more than people caught up in roundups. People just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even those actively fighting our forces are not "the terrorist", but people doing exactly what we'd be doing under foreign occupation.

We've captured countless people, and even with torture, haven't lowered the number of combatants in the slightest. We just don't seem to be catching the "right" people, if they're still recruiting numbers we can't deal with.

Another quote from the article....

"The ideology is not popular among most, even Muslims," he said. "We need to undermine support by amplifying the moderate forces and undermining the enemy's repressive and corrupt behavior."

...says exactly what we need to do, but first we need to stop our own "repressive and corrupt behavior", otherwise we'll accomplish nothing but more terrorism. We can't "amplify" moderates, while cause them to be "collateral damage" at the same time.