GWB is wrong, as usual
GWB > : "The war on terror is like the war on cancer, or the war on crime, or the war on rats in a big city. You do well by minimizing the cancer deaths, the crime, or the rats, but you never can eliminate them completely."
ThaSaltCracka > : "I rarely agree with GWB, but what he said here is right on, however unfortunate that answer may see."
No, GWB is wrong.
1. Comparing terrorism to natural disasters or illnesses dehumanizes the problem (when it is quite obviously a human problem and not something between, say, Zeus and Athena) and places its solution outside human capabilities. Note that the first step in getting irrational about a situation is to assess its players in abstract or fantastical terms.
2. "Wars Against Terror" have existed before -- and almost all of them had an "ending", quite unlike how GWB described things, in his facile manner. The terror unleashed by the IRA was ultimately not like "cancer" or the "plague", as GWB would have it (and as the British authorities at the time were claiming). The terror unleashed by ETA on the people of Spain is not like some crazy rats infesting a building: the very terrorism of the ETA defeated their objective (the independence of the Basque country) since so many Basques turned away in disgust from the concept of independence. The terror os the Russian original nihilists was defeated. The terror of the Jewish paramilitary organisations during the 1940s has ended (because it was vindicated!) while the terror of the Palestinian suicide bombers will end when the (very real) grievances of the Palestinians are addressed - finally - even in a manner that is distant from what the terrorists envisage (eg annihilation of Israel).
...Let me go deep to what GWB is saying : he is saying that the war against terror will be endless. Which neatly coincides with the time period through which GWB and his ilk want to see their ideology and methods ruling over America.
(They may get four more years pretty soon, at the very least. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img])
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