"Well [totally uncalled for expletive, about which far to much has also been said, but it does show the level of debate espoused by the fellow who used it], what kind of a long range plan can you come up with for combating terrorism in the world?"

Okay, Old Guy, I'll tell you what kind of long-range plan is absolutely guaranteed not to work:   invading countries with large armies and destroying the infrastructure (power, water supplies, blowing up roads, bridges, buildings, etc.) that people depend on, and killing some 30,000 civilians and wounding and maiming an undetermined number.

This is a sure-fire way of pissing off a lot of people and thereby encouraging recruitment for the various terrorist organizations around the world in order to fight the "Great Satan." Osama bin Laden and those of his ilk can claim (and are claiming) that this provides irrefutable proof that America is indeed that "Great Satan," there to steal their oil and gas resources, keep them oppressed, and in the process, attempt to obliterate Islam. Iraqis who lived under the yoke of Saddam Hussein are not so dumb that they don't know that Hussein was our tyrant, and we didn't want to take him out (read "replace him") until he got delusions of grandeur and became hard to handle. Most of them are glad to see him gone, but being right there, they're not as easily fooled as to the true motives of the American government as the American public seems to be, thousands of miles away and receiving their news from the corporate media.

There are a number of very effective ways to combating terrorism. Immediate deterrence can best be accomplished by good intelligence leading to carefully targeted surgical strikes. But the best long-range plan is to find out why these folks are so pissed off at us and see if we can find ways to stop pissing them off. And no, it's not just because the people who become terrorists "hate freedom and our way of life." They don't. In fact, they would like some of it themselves. Therein lies the key.

Terrorists spawn like mosquitoes in a swamp of hopelessness and despair brought on by injustice, oppression, and exploitation, much of which is caused by the policies of the United States and a number of European countries that have been exploiting them for generations, if not centuries. This is why these are the countries in particular that have been, and will continue to be, targets of terrorist attacks. The way to stop mosquitoes from breeding is to drain the swamp.

Don Firth