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There Is a Military Solution to Terror

[Wall Street Journal ] Bret Stephens - For the week of May 16-23, there were 300 "violent incidents" in Iraq. That's down from 1,600 last June and the lowest recorded since March 2004. Al-Qaeda has been crushed by a combination of U.S. arms and Sunni tribal resistance. In Colombia, the number of FARC guerrilla attacks is down by more than two-thirds since 2002. In the face of a stepped-up campaign by the Colombian military (funded, equipped and trained by the U.S.), the group is now experiencing mass desertions. This news explodes the mindless shibboleth that there is "no military solution" when it comes to dealing with insurgencies. On the contrary, it turns out that the best way to end an insurgency is, quite simply, to beat it. The deeper problem here is the belief that the best way to deal with insurgents is to address the "root causes" of the grievance that purportedly prompted them to take up arms. But what most of these insurgencies seek isn't social or moral redress: It's absolute power. Beating an insurgency allows a genuine process of reconciliation and redress to take place.
2008-06-04 01:00:00
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