Jeroen wrote:
> There is this thing called "know your enemy". Some of the greatest military
> leaders in world history knew that the only way to defeat your enemy was to
> get to know him first. "What does my enemy think? Why does he think? And
> *how* does he think?"
>
> If you want to defeat terrorists without nuking the entire Middle East, get
> to know all those things. Only *then* do you have a chance of succesfully
> stopping them.
>
Actually, this is a lesson learned by the US Military in Vietnam. It is
something the North Vietnamese in their war against South Vietnam very
effectively, and which the US failed to achieve (for many reasons, few of them
the fault of the US Military, but a significant number the fault of the US
Administration of the day).
US Forces operating around the globe today spend an awful lot of effort on just
that facet, and the FBI has been taking crash courses for the last few years,
but there's an awful lot of differences to cope with.
Russell Chapman
Brisbane Australia
