Views are pretty polarized I guess!!??
If I can be allowed a few cents...
The Middle East is a vastly more complex problem than most people so far in this thread have admitted to.
You do not defeat a terrorist organisation with force. Full stop. Will I say that again? You do not defeat a terrorist organisation by force. If you think you can, name one. British history (of which overall I am proud)is littered unfortunately with occasions when we tried to brutally stamp out a "terrorist" organisation that didn't suit our empire's ambitions (the Boers in South Africa, where we invented concentration camps, and the IRA in Northern Ireland, where some of the "terrorists" are now Members of Parliament, immediately come to mind) with force. We never "won". Peace came when the inequities or illegalities or disenfranchisement that gave rise to the "terrorism" were addressed.
If you want another example of how a "terrorist" became a respected politician, then look at Israel. In 1939 a militant Jewish group called the Stern Group split from an already blacklisted underground group called the Irgun with the intention of setting up terrorist cells in London and assassinating prominent British politicians. The Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 Britons, Jews and Arabs and injuring many more. The Stern Gang assassinated Lord Moyne, the British military governor of Egypt. The leader of the Irgun who at one stage had a £2000 price on his head from the British Government as a terrorist most wanted? Menachem Begin, later to become Prime Minister of Israel in 1977. The leader of the Stern Gang? Yitzhak Shamir, elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1983.
Define a "terrorist" organisation. Hundreds of thousands of Southern Lebanese look to Hizbollah as saviours; funding schools, hospitals, they effectively run southern Lebanon as a country within a country.
There are a few people on this thread who obviously know their Middle East history, the rest, well, you're just being way too simplistic.
Please read up about the subject before jumping to conclusions. Read The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
www.cactus48.com/truth.html for a start.
The only way to defeat "terrorism" is by talk and education. This is dismissed as namby-pambyism and defeatism and appeasement. It is not. If it takes guns to get people to the table to talk.. well so be it.. that is the correct use of force, to my mind.
