Fighting Against Terrorism

I've had a lot of free time recently (even with school starting back up) and have found myself reading a couple different books about the Special Forces of America and about how and why they were created. I'll be honest, I originally picked up the books to read the stories from the actual teams and one book, 'Inside Delta Force' is exactly that. Written by Eric Haney, he was one of the original operatives in Delta Force and the training they received is astounding. And I'll have to admit I had my little boy moment saying, 'That's sooo cool'.

The next book I started to read was written by Tom Clancy and a retired Brigadier General Carl Stiner. I know what some of you may think, oh it's a Clancy book, that's what I thought as well, I was expecting stories from the actual operatives, but what I didn't know was that Clancy also writes non-fiction about the military. And that's where Stiner comes. Stiner and Clancy lay down an outline and history of Special Forces and unconventional warfare. Clancy then go on to explain just how difficult it is to combat terrorism.

One thing I found interesting in both books was that to fight terrorism requires a degree of cut-throatedness(not a word I know, so sue me). What I found interesting was you have these scumbagish, unscrupulous men as terrorists willing to do whatever necessary to accomplish there goals. And oppositely, the men we have combating that, are the most honorable men, that sometimes have to do worse than their counter-parts to effectively combat them.

Now with all this talk and divide going on with Iraq and whatever our reasons for being there are, we cannot forget that it was terrorist actions that spurred us to actions. How do we effectively combat someone who is willing more willing to die than work out a compromise or a dialogue for peace.

This isn't the first time that terrorism has been encountered, it happened during Roman times as well. The Romans had a strong(too strong) response to any terrorist act against a Roman citizen. For instance if a Roman Citizen was killed, Roman soldiers would grab 10 foreigners at random and kill them. The life of a Roman was worth 10 non-Romans. This worked as a strong deterrent, because the ruled populous understood that the Romans would follow through on this policy with no remorse. And it's one thing to lay down your life for a cause, but that of your wife, husband, mother, daughter, father, and son? Like I stated, this was brutal, but it worked.

So what am I saying? I have no clue, just some thoughts I put together on my drive home from work.