Does a pre-emptive strike against the terrorists serve the best interest of the US?

Question

Does a pre-emptive strike against the terrorists serve the best interest of the US?

Answer 1

I completely agree with Jeffrey S  above.  A large scale military attack would be costly and provide tons of collateral damage, and may leave a situation like Iraq where there is no exit strategy.  The best option is to make terrorism unappealing.

I personally believe that the U.S. despiratelly needs military reform. This is the 21st century, and the best way to fight terrorism is not with tanks, missles, or an army, but with intelligence.

Replace 100 infantry men with 2 people sitting in a room watching satelite feeds. If you do need to take ground action, send in a small team of highly trained specialists to do the job, and then extract them.  The best way to defeat terrorism is by making it unattractive. My strategy to combat this is to rob the terrorists.  Yes, rob them. If they don't have money, they can't buy weapons. Also, while this wont stop the most fanatical terrorists, they will lose considerable support if people aren't getting paid and are having trouble feeding their families.  How to rob them.......through the wonders of technology and intimidation. Terrorists have 2 options for their money -

1. have it in banks.

2. Carry it with them.

If they have it in banks, it is suseptable to hackers and also countries could leverage the bank into refusing service or giving up account information. If they carry it with them, that makes them less mobile, and thus more easy to spot by satellite. It also increases the possibility that one of their leutenants will kill them for the money and then say it was suicide.

We can then use the money we steal from the terrorists to build more satellites and pay more people to watch them.  

Is it immoral? ~possibly ~ but it is not nearly as immoral as killing innocent people (which is what the terrorists, and large military action against them would do).

edit:

to G. : nope, just every once in a while you find people you agree with on here.

Answer 2

yes, because we have a chance to terminate them before they can kill /wound americans. to wait, is inviting diaster.

Answer 3

I believe that was the purpose of the war on Iraq. Did it serve the best interest of the US?

Edit: Jeffrey S just answered my question.

Answer 4

where would this pre-emptive strike take place exactly?

Iraq? Pakistan? Saudi Arabia? Newark, NJ?  Washington D.C.?

the list goes on and on....

well said jeffry and matt s.  you guys related...??

Answer 5

Yeah, that would be great, except for one small problem:  there is no such thing as "the terrorists."  There are a number of different terrorist groups all around the world, with different agendas, but with no particular location.  There are certainly some Muslim terrorist groups in the Middle East, but there are also many non-Muslim terrorist groups in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  There are also terrorist groups that are supported by one country against another.  For instance, the US supports the Mujahedin-e Kalq, an Iranian terrorist organization operating out of Iraq, which has as its goal the overthrow of Iran's current government.

What kind of strike did you have in mind, by the way?  Just about any kind of air or missile strike would end up killing more innocents than terrorists, as has been the case in the past.  Then you end up with more terrorists, as the friends and relatives of the innocents killed take up arms against those launching the strike.

Although you will never be able to eliminate terrorism completely, the best way to deal with it is to make it less attractive than other options.  You don't do this simply by killing terrorists, because there will always be more people willing to step up and replace those killed.  You reduce the threat of terrorism by ameliorating the conditions that cause people to choose that course, conditions such as poverty, ignorance, and particularly hopelessness.  In the meantime, you can also reduce the threat by using proven investigation techniques to detect and prevent any plots that might be brewing and to pursue the perpetrators of any successful plots (assuming they survive, of course).

I'm quite sure I will be criticized by those who seem to think the answer to every problem is to kick @ss and take names, but the validity of my position is attested to by the fact that the Bush administration, which has taken the "aggressive" approach, has utterly failed at reducing the terrorist threat.  In fact in 2006 in a National Intellegence Estimate, which is a joint report by all sixteen US intelligence agencies, the point was made that the war in Iraq, the supposed "central front in the War on Terror," has actually made both the threat of terrorism and the actual incidence of terror much worse.

Answer 6

It depends on who you're calling a "terrorist."  Bush & Company forged documents trying to link Iraq to 9/11 and the result has been a clusterf**k of enormous proportions, so you gotta be careful throwing "The T word" around.