While deployed to Iraq, I worked with Iraqi police. My primary function was to oversee the development of a professional and stable police force in my area of operations and toward that end I developed training for them and conducted regular evaluations. I also worked with American Soldiers and one of the things I emphasized time and time again with BOTH the Iraqi Police and our own Soldiers was not to make the problems in Iraq worse by mistreating civilians. Despite my reputation as something of an ogre here, I am intimately familiar with what it takes to develop and maintain positive relations with a community.

I tell you guys all that to lead into this...The proper treatment of the community is essential in any effort to stop terrorism or to wage what we in the military term COIN, or counter-insurgency operations. I used to run update a thread here that raised issues about the Palestinian-Israel conflict from Palestinian perspective. Rather than dig that thread up and revive it, I have decided to start fresh here. Take a look at the next posts and feel free to jump in with your own comments. This will be a closely moderated thread.

On June 8th, the B'Tselem group captured video of Israeli settlers attacking a group of Palestinian shepherds. The settlers, masked and armed with batons or sticks, approached the shepherds and began beating them. No apparent provocation was evident.

Such actions have an obvious impact on the conflict between the Palestinians and the israelis. When you attack and beat innocent people, you make them frightened and angry. Frightened and angry people are liable to lash out at those who make them frightened and angry. When they cannot do so opening, they will do so in secret. One such way is to support or even engage in terrorist activity. None of that justifies terrorist activity. Certainly a beating, even one with a stick, does not justify a bombing. And yet...it is easy to understand how people might resort to violence when confronted by abuse they are otherwise powerless to prevent. As I said...none of this justifies terrorism and arguments to that effect will recieve short shrift.

Was it difficult to determine the civilians from the enemy? Did they at anytime change roles...the insurgents becoming the nice guy and civilians becoming the enemy? If so that must have been very hard work and taxing on the psyche.

During post war Japan, MacArthur understood the need to treat the Japanese with respect. This has paid off as our relations with Japan has been very good.

On July 7th, a young Palestinian girl captured video of an Israeli soldier firing a rubber bullet at the feet of a bound and blindfolded Palestinian man being held by another soldier. The Palestinian was struck in the toe. What is the point of such abuse? Who among us would not be moved to violence or to the support of violence against those who treated us in similar fashion? I would hope we are all rational enough not to resort to a homicide bombing against an innocent target but I think we could all understand anger among the victims of such mistreatment.

And I think we should all understand anger among the Isrealis when two of their soldiers are kidnapped, murdered and have their bodies held in ransom for a 'prisoner exchange' by Hezbollah.

My older brother did much the same as you did, Law, only he did it in Viet Nam. It's a usually unrecognized and unrewarding job.

While we were stationed at Ft. Benning, my parents hosted the Viet Namese officer contingent. They opened our home to those officers and allowed them to cook their favorite foods--anything they wanted. Shortly after that, my Father became the Military Attache to French Indo-China. The Viet Namese officers then became 'the enemy.' When my brother was sent over, he also had to deal with those friends who had then become the enemy.

Where does it stop, Law? This is my question to you.

Indeed. Israeli anger is also understandable. When you do the above or when you support those who blow up school buses, you invite a heavy handed response by those in power. It is completely understandable. One might even point out that a beating or a broken toe pales in comparison to blowing up a bus full of school kids. of course, that is not really the point. All sides feel justified in their actions and to an extent are indeed justified.

What all sides need to understand is that there are consequences, often unintended and unanticipated ones, to their actions. This is something COIN tries to emphasize to individual Soldiers. For instance, if an Iraqi vehicle comes too close to an American convoy the Soldiers in that convoy are going to fire at it. In a perfect scenario, they will fire warning shots and the vehicle will stop. In a less perfect scenario, they put some rounds through the engine block and disable the vehicle. In an even less perfect scenario, they kill the driver and/or passengers. The intended result is to protect the convoy from a possible VBIED (vehicle borne improvised explosive device aka car bomb.) However, consider the unintended consequences. In the warning shot scenario, perhaps the driver is angered by the encounter and feels frustrated that he cannot even drive his produce to market without the Americans shooting at him. He decides to make a modest contribution to the local JAM chapter as they are one of the more evident groups working to get the Americans out of Iraq. Perhaps the vehicle was destroyed. Consider those consequences. Now the man, a small farmer, has no way to get his produce to market. He has no way to get fertilizer for his fields. He cannot go and get parts for his irrigation equipment. His livelihood is ruined and yet he still has two wives and six kids to support. Along comes the local AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq) pitchman who offers him a few hundred dollars to plant an IED targeting the very same Americans who shot his truck.

The point to all this is, actions have consequences and when engaged in counterinsurgency ops, as we are in Iraq and as the Israelis essentially are in the West Bank and Gaza, one must remain constantly alert to the potential consequences of one's activity. THat is not to say one cannot take action. Far from it. Rather, one most mitigate those consequences that cannot be avoided. For instance, if you shoot at a vehicle, even just warning shots, you need to stop that vehicel and make contact with the driver. Verify he is uninjured. Provide an explaination as to why the shots were fired and how to avoid such in the future. If the vehicle was damaged, provide the person with a means to recieve compensation for his loss. Demonstrate the necessary modicum of respect for the individual so as to reduce the hostility he might rightly feel as a result of your actions.

It is easy to make a terrorist. The mistreatment by soldiers of civilians is the easiest. Some times it is caused by untrained and ignorant soldiers who let their hatred of the other side dictate their actions. When they see the enemy is less than human it is possible to torture, rape or kill them. This has happen in every war. Today with new types of camers this will most likly appear on video.

Sometimes just sheer arrongance of a foreigner in another country will cause recentment. Thus the arabs and persians now hate Israel. They did not hate them before.the occupation. So Americans will be hated in the Middle east for centuries.

If it not surprizing that most Vietamese turn against the Americans.This hatred is still fourty years after war. So will it be in Iraq. Terrorist in these cases are just freedom fighters.No matter how true the crimes of the occupying forces are they will still fuel hatred years after the war

Aus, ancilliary political comments are not what this thread is about. It is incorrect to claim the Arabs and Persians did not hate the Israelis before the Occupation. Moreover, it is unrelated to the topic...which is how terrorists are created. Similarly, your comments about Viet Nam are misplaced as there are vanishingly few examples of terrorist activity by the Vietnamize directed against America. Terrorists are NEVER just freedom fighters. It is not perspective that accurately defines terrorism and terrorists but rather the specific activity in which the terrorists engage.

The behavior of soldiers on the battle field and off certainly has potential to breed terrorists. That was one of the points in launching this thread. I provide some brief commentary on US activity in Iraq and discussed two specific examples from Israel. I could as easily discuss specific examples from the British presence in Northern Ireland. However, it is not just the actions of soldiers that breed terrorism.

Consider the Oklahoma City Bombing carried out by McVeigh and Nichols. The motivation for their activity was not the conduct of soldiers ont he battle field but rather the conduct of the civilians in the US government. They felt they had a legitimate complaint against the US Federal government and this spawned a bombing. Similarly, we might consider the activities of the Aum Shinrikyo-Aleph group responsible for the sarin gas attack in Tokyo. Their motivation was not the behavior of soldiers but rather a perception that they were being persecuted by the Japanese establishment and therefore sought to lash out at that establishment.

In all these cases, we see some sort of trigger or motivating factor that caused the individuals involved to express their dissatisfaction with the status quo by engaging in terroristic acts of violence. The behavior was the consequence of the activities of others, typically those in positions of authority from which they could impact the actors. None of that suggests the terrirstic activites were justified but only that it is possible to divine a precipitating factor for the activity after the fact. The key here, and the point of this discussion, is to try and divine such factors BEFORE they trigger a terroristic act.

One of the difficulties in divining and preventing terrorist attacks is the fact that there are some people who perceive any sleight they may receive as bombworthy, another is the fact that there are some people who just like to blow things up. I have long maintained that some types of beheaders and bombers get off sexually on such activity, and having it legitimized is 7th heaven for them.

However, once a terrorist is created by real or perceived actions against him and his family/religion/country, I believe it is almost impossible to "cure" him, or get him to stop terrorist activities.

While criminals may have a slip, or a youthful bout with the law and then reform, I believe a terrorist is forever.

And when the terror is government sponsored, and made to appear glamorous, when puppet characters in childrens' shows exhort their little viewers to kill Zionists (for example), then it is almost impossible to get to the root causes and there is little hope for cessation of terrorist activity.