Terrorism and response

One of the most interesting things that I’ve learned about my experience at the ICT has been the contrast between operational effectiveness and integration.  Israel seems to tolerate a small minority of Arabs within the country, but when it comes to integrating them into a productive society, they have fallen far short of a desirable outcome.  Home demolitions are not only part of the West Bank CT strategy, they are also a means of local oppression against the Palestinians living under them.  Stevie has gone on record as saying that, in regard to demolishing the homes of late suicide bombers, it has been effective in making the local population come forward and help the IDF stop the bomber before he has a chance to act.  However, determining if this strategy is effective is difficult because there is no way of knowing how many additional strikes it influences.  On one of my last days at the ICT, I was shown an article about General Pershing who was placed in command of the US Philippine forces either just before or after WWI.  There was a Muslim uprising there where they killed a number of US soldiers and the culprits were caught.  Knowing what they did about Muslim culture, the soldiers tied up all the men, naked, and proceeded to butcher several pigs in front of them.  The soldiers splashed the blood on the prisoners and covered the bullets of their guns in the blood as well with the implication that if they killed the Muslims with the bullets, they would not be able to enter paradise.  They then proceeded to shoot all the men except for one, who they let go to tell the story to the other insurgents in the area.  Supposedly, there wasn’t another attack against US soldiers for almost 40 years after this.  I don’t know if it is true or not and I don’t know if causation equals correlation either, but it does seem to me that regardless of what caused the lull in the violence, all it did was delay it until a later point.  Today the insurgency is still going on.  I’m not saying that a military response is not warranted, but I believe that brutal repression will only elicit an increase in motivation that will eventually warrant an equally brutal response.