The War on Terror Helps Terrorists

Accoring to this article in The Guardian, a British study has concluded what should be obvious to everybody with a mind by now, that using violence and violence alone to fight terrorists is helping terrorists. The American's seem to think that everybody can be intimidated and frightened into doing what they say, but now that threat of invasion is much more real to Arab countries since the Iraq War, of course they're going to build up their militaries and pursue nuclear weapons with more fervor than ever before.

Those on the right like to say that these people hate us and would have developed these weapons to kill us anyway. If that's the case, why isn't Saudi Arabia doing that? That country is full of people that hate us, yet they aren't preparing their forces to fight the Americans. Why? Maybe because they know that Americans have no designs on that country? If these people can't be pacified through diplomacy and economic development, how do you explain the American alliance with Saudi Arabia? Why was Saddam Hussein not seen as threat during the Iran-Iraq War? The idea that these countries need to be democratized in order to have a peaceful relationship with the rest is clearly contradicted by this.

The righties also like to say that anybody who dares to speculate that maybe military solutions aren't the best solutions to the problem of terrorism are "traitors" who hate America, hate the West and want the terrorists to win. They seem too simple minded to get their heads around the idea that someone could sincerely believe that non-military solutions could be effective. They refuse to even entertain the notion that diplomacy could work, because I don't think they want it to work. They just want to see Muslims punished. They don't want peace, they don't even really want security. They want revenge, and they are willing to sacrifice their safety and the lives of thousands of their children in order to get it. These people are as big a threat to the West as the terrorists themselves.