re: #308 Dark_Falcon

But you can convince people that attempting to act on those ideas is a death sentence. You can demonstrate that their anger is useless against a foe too strong to beat. The object is to either kill the ideology’s adherents, or convince them they cannot win.

What I’m saying is you don’t convince them with war. War and war footing (as opposed to law enforcement methods) aren’t for winning arguments with extremists, they’re for taking and defending land and resources and strategic interests.

The way the extremists lose is when movements like the Green Movement in Iran win. The green movement wins not when we demonize Islam, but when the people of Iran look at their leaders and decide that they’re being lied to and they want something better. Twitter was a better weapon against extremists than any bomb we can drop, any awesome high tech plane we build, any laser guided missle or any battleship. For example! We have a long history of fucking with and doing terrible things to Iran. The west helped radicalize them in the first place! We can’t “war” that away. Maybe we can inform it away.