Military force not the best way to fight terrorism

[WickedLou9]

Study questions US strategy against al-Qaida - Yahoo! News

Its report said that the use of military force by the United States or other countries should be reserved for quelling large, well-armed and well-organized insurgencies, and that American officials should stop using the term "war on terror" and replace it with "counterterrorism."
"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests there is no battlefield solution to terrorism," said Seth Jones, the lead author of the study and a Rand political scientist.

What do you guys make of this? I have sort of thought that this might be the case for quite a while but I didn't have any data or anything to back up what was essentially just my opinion. It's good to have some validation.

[Smull]

He might have a point when it comes to terrorism. It seems to me like no matter how hard you hit them militarily, terrorists can still find a way to strike out against us. However, I think that only really applies to attacks against our homeland, the situation in Iraq is an insurgency, and this requires military presence. Counter-terrorism and counter-insurgencies are different, the CIA is doing a lot of the "policing" that the author is speaking of worldwide as a counter-terrorism measure, the military is handling the counter-insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[motivez]

I think they're absolutely right. You can't wage war on a tactic, and large scale military operations lead to insurgencies in the country of our operation, as we've seen in Iraq, and the resurgence in Afghanistan as well.

We have to look at the situation we're in with a new eye, I think. We can't wage a traditional war against a non traditional opponent who generally doesn't have a country supporting them, or even most of the population in that country. If we do, we risk turning the country against us and making it harder to go after them at all.