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Title: General foresees 'generational war' against terrorism (50 to 100 years)
Source:
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
URL Source: http://www.washtimes.com/national/20061213-010657-5560r.htm
Published: Dec 13, 2006
Author: Bill Gertz
Post Date: 2006-12-13 13:18:26 by Horse
Keywords: None
Views: 144
Comments: 10
The American people need to prepare for a long-duration war against radical Muslims who are set to fight for 50 to 100 years to create an Islamist state in the region, a top Pentagon strategist in the war on terror says. Air Force Brig. Gen. Mark O. Schissler said in an interview that the current strategy for fighting Islamists includes both military and ideological components that make it similar to the 40-year Cold War against communism. "We're in a generational war. You can try and fight the enemy where they are and where they're attacking you, or prevent them and defend your own homeland," said Gen. Schissler, deputy director for the war on terrorism within the strategic plans office of the Pentagon's Joint Staff. "But that's not enough to stop it. We've got to break the chain, and that's ... the ideology. We really need to show the errors in Islamist extremist thinking." Gen. Schissler said he is concerned that Washington politics is weakening the will of the nation. "I don't care about the politics. I care about people understanding the facts of what's our enemy is thinking about, what's our strategy to defeat them, and for [Americans] to understand that it will take a long fight, mostly because our enemy is committed to the long fight," he said. "They're absolutely committed to the 50-, 100-year plan." "One of my concerns is how to maintain the American will, the public will over that duration," he said. America's past wars lasted three to four years and sustaining support for longer wars "is very difficult," he said. A Joint Staff briefing on the long war against terrorism states that since 2001, more than 3,000 al Qaeda terrorists are held in more than 100 nations, including 500 in Pakistan, while two-thirds of al Qaeda leaders are dead or in prison. More than 17 terrorist attacks were disrupted since 2001, including three in the United States and two in Europe. Al Qaeda's ultimate goal, the general said, is to set up an extremist "caliphate" stretching from western North Africa through southern Europe and along a path through the Middle East to Central and Southeast Asia. "We're pretty convinced that the extremists are not ever going to give up the fight," Gen. Schissler said, noting that they are driven by the concept of jihad that makes it a religious duty to wage terrorist war. The current war on terrorism requires fighting with ideas. In the Cold War, "we didn't beat ...the communists by militarily taking them to the battlefield," he said. "We took them to the intellectual battlefield and beat them against their ideas, the ideology of communism." One goal is to disrupt al Qaeda efforts to "radicalize" young people ages 19 to 25 through educational efforts. Another objective is to assist moderate Muslims who see extremism as unacceptable. Ultimately, Muslim scholars, clerics and other religious and government leaders will have to "take a stand," albeit one that carries grave risks because of the extremists' harsh methods, Gen. Schissler said.
Poster Comment: I remember a press conference a few years ago where a general was asked how long this war on terror would last. His answer was to laugh. I think the war on terror will last until the bankers establish a universal dictatorship and raise a generation of people happy in their slavery. I think their goal is impossible to accomplish.
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#1. To: Horse (#0)
This brigadier general is really working hard for his second star.
He sure has his lips on the pulse of the administration, doesn't he?
I think the general had best check with China on this. We may or may not have the will, but they have our wallets. It's not really true that "where there's a will, there's a way." I could sit here and "will" myself to have the net worth of Warren Buffett. But I'll still be sitting here with my humble digs and modest means from now on. China is "Warren Buffett."
Before long it will be a DE-generational war. P.S. Formatting is our friend. You can either check "Make blank lines new paragraphs", or use the < P > tag (eliminate the spaces inside the brackets) to insure that the text is not one big unreadable lump (for some of us older folks, that's just how it is).
You are either with the President, or you are for the Bill Of Rights.
The empire needs a steady diet of enemies to justify all the spending on a military/police state - even if we have to create the enemies. Richard W.
Fifty to one hundred years. Effin' great. A lifetime career for these bastards. A life sentence for the rest of us.
Give 'til it hurts. Gun Owners of America
bump
This is a key error in US thinking. Not that there is a group of people willing to fight for 50-100 years to create an Islamic state, hell, that's probably true. The notion where we go wrong is the idea that the American People need to fight them at all. That without our arms and blood these movements wouldn't die on their own. That the peoples of the Middle East don't have the good sense to quash these unhealthy movements before they actually do take over. Iran is a good case in point. They elected a president. We didn't like him because he was a "socialist". So we got rid of him in a coup and installed the Shah. The Shah was a ruthless, authoritarian dictator with a notorious secret police, death camps, hit squads and all the bad things you might expect. The Iranians had to get rid of him. We wouldn't help, so they turned to the one outfit that seemed to have their shit together, the Moslem clerics. But if we hadn't fucked around with them in the first place, there wouldn't have been an American puppet Shah that they had to get out from under. There is this arrogance about us that we think we can solve the world's problems if we just bomb the right people or assassinate the right people or impoverish the right people or throw money at the right people. It simply doesn't usually work. There are very few "successful" examples of where we've intervened that haven't come back as even bigger problems. There is a seemingly endless supply of things we've made worse or just plain fucked up. Non-intervention. It is a principle we need to seriously adopt.
the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread.
The WOT is just the latest version of the cold war. The US empire could not survive without the fear of evil-doers who want to kill us. Richard W.
And the similarities are many. We have an enemy that we subsidize in many ways and for whom our words and deeds provide the recruiting posters that lure in their young hot heads. It is ludicrous to talk about fighting a religion, which of course is not the claimed objective but is clearly there in the subtext of our propaganda. Islam has been around for ca. 1300 years and will be around for a while yet. Can you rub extirpate Christianity or Buddhism through a genreation of war or even many generations of war? I think not. But you can give it generations of martyrs that way and seal many hearts in lifelong enmity. Oh, I am weary of this. It's beginning to affect my mental health.
Give 'til it hurts. Gun Owners of America
#2. To: Fred Mertz (#1)
#3. To: Horse (#0)
One of my concerns is how to maintain the American will, the public will over that duration
#4. To: Horse (#0)
#5. To: Horse (#0)
#6. To: Horse (#0)
#7. To: Arete (#5)
The empire needs a steady diet of enemies to justify all the spending on a military/police state - even if we have to create the enemies.
a village is missing its idiot.
#8. To: Horse (#0)
The American people need to prepare for a long-duration war against radical Muslims who are set to fight for 50 to 100 years to create an Islamist state in the region, a top Pentagon strategist in the war on terror says.
#9. To: randge (#6)
A lifetime career for these bastards. A life sentence for the rest of us.
#10. To: Arete (#9)
The WOT is just the latest version of the cold war.
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