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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4247 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 10, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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The other night my father rhetorically asked "I feel like asking Netanyahu, 'when has a terrorist group ever been defeated militarily?"

I immediately said "In Sri Lanka in 2009?" The reason it occurred to me was because of @CriticalDuty's write-up here.

Naturally, my father immediately commenced moving the goalposts of the question.

Out of curiosity, are there any other recent examples of terrorist groups being defeated militarily?

I think El-Salvador is a good example, the cartels aren't exactly terrorists, but the difference is nominal for all intents and purposes. If El-Salvador can within months with their shitty military..

I think that question unnecessarily invokes history and empiricism when it needn't be, because the question most normies actually mean to ask is "is it even possible?".

The answer to that is, if Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan can be defeated, so can some rag tags in the desert. It's just that modern powers don't have the stomach to carry out a merciless campaign (high civilian toll) followed by prolonged occupation/brainwashing.

I don't know if Islamist terrorists in particular are a special case or not. My galaxy brained shower thought is that the Quran and the resulting set of potential downstream belief systems will almost always produce something that approximates Islamist/Jihadist terrorists, they never had a cultural moderation of the likes of the Nw Testament and the religion/scripture->lore is far too political to have any meaningful distinction of Church and State even in the space of conceivable ideas.

There are meaningful differences, though—I'm sure they'd immediately point to the palestinians thinking of themselves as a different people than the Israelis (which I would guess wouldn't be the case for the cartels), and, as you pointed out, the cartels aren't exactly terrorists. You can lock up all the cartels, but I haven't heard people suggest locking up the entire population of Palestine.

ISIS seems a better parallel to me.

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