I believe it's the same thing. What specific foreign policy incidents are driving the terrorists then? If you say our mistreatment can be dated to WW1, then what caused their attacks in 1801? They, themselves said it was religion.
Vyo, this is a weak argument and you know it. The Barbary Wars perfectly illustrate that it's not foreign policy that drives the Islamic fundamentalists, but theology and indoctrination.
What does this have to do with anything? My argument is that Muslim extremists (the argument over whether or not they are perverting the Koran notwithstanding) need no pretext to go to war other than religion.
It's an argument I hear all the time, vyo. That you "can't defeat terrorism" and "you can't defeat an ideology" and that the only way to solve this problem is to be nice and apologize for our past mistakes.
That's not really true, vyo. Why do you think the "Pirates" (really just an 18th century word for "terrorists") kept at war for so long? Even though the Tropolitan war ended in 1805, the Algerians launched another war in 1815 and even after this war was lost, they continued to prey on French ships until around 1830. The reason given by author of The Barbary Pirates? "The pirates must have war. Otherwise, the world would soon cease to fear them."
Any means necessary doesn't mean automatically jump to nuclear holocaust, vyo. I know you're an honest guy and don't mean to deflect the issue but that is not at all what "any means necessary" suggests.
We should start at home. I've done this before but I will do it again. Contrast the Iraq War to how we fought WW2 where we mobilized 15 million men, built a 3 ocean navy, built the B-29, completed the Manhatten project, liberated dozens of countries, defeated Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany. All in about 4 years. That's when we were a serious country and had a "do whatever it takes" mentality.
It has been 6 years since 9/11 and we still haven't reorganized our government bureaucracies so they are effective, we still don't hold our enemies accountable, we still don't insist our allies pay attention, we haven't secured our borders, and the mainstream media is rooting for the wrong side.
This is a very serious issue. We are in a global conflict against an enemy that wants to destroy us. A biological attack is very real, when you have 6 out of the 8 terrorists in Great Britain being medical doctors. A nuclear attack is looking ever more likely. Pakistan is unstable and the Iranians and N Koreans are unchecked. By all accounts, we are not taking this war seriously enough.
So by "any means necessary" -- I would say that we start at home, not right to turning the Middle East into a sheat of glass.
