Putting Up the Sledgehammer

I commend the linked article from the Sydney Morning Herald to you. In it, UK Prime Minister and Bush Bitch Tony Blair has admitted that our use of military might in Southwest Asia "has left the West losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Middle East."

The old saw that you have to break a few eggs when making an omelet won't work any longer, folks. People see through naked aggression, and they don't like it.

Using military force to counteract social ills doesn't work. Let's walk through a likely scenario:
1. What will we do to stop illegal immigration?
2. Put troops on the border!
3. How do the troops stop the illegals?
4. Shoot to kill!
5. And when the borders are surrounded by walls made up of corpses, will we have stopped illegal immigration?
6. No.
See, immigration is caused by social pressures; in the best example of this, economic pressure is forcing people in Mexico to seek work in the United States. So, how do we stop illegal immigration? Try to work with Mexico in solving its social ills so that people won't want to risk their lives sneaking through deserts.

Simple, huh?

In my opinion, based on what I've read and what I've seen, Terrorism is a product of social ills such as unemployment. It cannot be solved by military might, since every undeserving corpse you leave behind only makes the survivors angry - and supplies more recruits to the terrorists. In much the same way, street gangs see a rise in recruitment when socioeconomic factors take a downturn, and heavyhanded actions by the police make things worse in many cases.

Of course, convincing Bush of this would be like King Knut trying to order the tide to stop rolling in - it just can't be done.