Fighting Back the Book

[Bill Moore]

Bob,

I recommend you review the book again, you will be hard pressed to find a chapter that doesn't address underlying issues, and the criticality of the government not further inflamming those issues by inappropriately or over reacting. It points out that sometimes the underlying issues are legitimate and other times they're not (Aum Shinryko for example, or pushing for Sharia law in a country for the majority of people don't desire it).

You seem to view the world through your theory of governance, and you tend to default too quickly at times to assuming every terrorist has a legitimate cause based on an underlying issue the government has failed to address. In fact, this probably addresses a minority of terrorist cases. In many cases there is no reason for the government to address terrorist demands/underlying issues, in fact if they did so they would no longer be legitimate. Every situation must be evaluated on its own facts, and not every case will conform to one theory.

For a government to maintain legitimacy, it must effectively address terrorist threats to themselves and their citizens. What constitutes effective will vary on the situation. What I like it about it is it not prescriptive, but rather serves as a thinking man's guide.

This book does a good job of exploring how a government should fight back, and lessons learnt from various case studies.

[Bob's World]

Bill,

I definitely agree that there are, and will always be, a few evil nut jobs out there who do evil for evil's sake, or who have formed a completely irrational view of government and build organizations around that shared irrational view to wage terror to advance that agenda. That goes to my point of starting with understanding the primary purpose for action and relationship to the population the group operates among. Pure CT tactics work very well against such groups/individuals - but in a law enforcement context, not a military warfare context.

I harp on the causal role of governance, not because I think that is the source of all terrorism, but rather because it is the aspect of dealing with terrorism that governments screw up the most. Also because it is, IMO, the crux of the nearly complete failure at the strategic level of our past 12 years of chasing ideologies and "bad guys."

Break - Just found and reviewed my tabbed copy. I have to concede, most of the tabs were positive, and that while I had a few concerns, that the overall message is one that I can endorse.