The United States Will Lose the War on Terror (Esp. Iraq & Afghanistan).

Still... no actual rebuttal - I'm going to copy/paste part of my earlier argument. I feel you haven't really refuted any of my points. You dance around the issue with talk of the Hussein brothers' atrocities and how OBL is a major figure in the WOT. This is fairly obvious to anyone with a TV, newspaper, magazine, or computer. Once again, I'll outline the situation... We're fighting a war we can't win. Nevermind the notion that you can't kill an idea - I'm talking about a qualitative solution, not a quantitative solution. In other words, winning is containing terrorism, not killing the terrorists. The problem is that the terrorist organizations (primarily AQ as the US is concerned) are fighting a type of war we simply don't know how to fight. The US is exceedingly good at the type of warfare practiced during WWII - the troop movements with air and artillery support. However, the US is terrible at fighting guerilla wars - this is pretty clearly evidenced by Vietnam, and Iraq. Insurgencies have been historically quite successful against superpowers: The French and US in Vietnam, the Afghan rebels and the USSR, France in Algeria, The People's Revolution in China. As the US is fighting now, we cannot win this war. Our contracts with companies like Blackwater are a HUGE part of this problem. The reason there's a huge snafu about Blackwater at the moment is that the terms of the US contract with them state that neither the US nor the Iraq government can prosecute them for civilian deaths. This doesn't make the Iraqis very happy, and in an insurgency, that's VERY VERY bad for the US. Another HUGE problem was that we defeated the Iraqi military and then disbanded it, leaving the state of Iraq with no military, no functioning government, and a lot of angry, bored warriors sitting around with nobody to fight. Oops - here comes the Iraq insurgency and Al-Qaeda looking for members... We've pissed off the Iraqi military, the Iraqi people, and we've got an insurgency on our hands. Without a MAJOR policy change and a HUGE influx of new troops, the Iraq insurgency will push the US military out of Iraq. And, by the way, the US media is part of the problem - a HUGE part of the problem. In Afghanistan, we perceive our efforts to be defeating the "head of the monster" that is AQ. The problem here is that AQ is a huge international organization, not actually that much unlike McDonalds. In fact, it would be a very apt analogy to call AQ the McDonalds or Starbucks of the terrorist world. If we even find the "base" of operations in Afghanistan, which is kind of unlikely anyway, they can simply pack it up and move the base to someplace else in a matter of (probably) hours. The al-Qaeda manual is on CD, easily movable, they use the internet for information movement, don't establish permanent bases... We're fighting ghosts in Afghanistan and Insurgents in Iraq. We can't win without changing policy and getting a lot more troops on the ground - like 400-500 THOUSAND troops, which is actually initially what the first general in charge of Iraq said was needed before he was fired. Oops again. We've taken the first step with Petraeus' counterinsurgency manual, but that's simply not enough. We need to study previous insurgencies and learn how to nip them in the bud. Essentially, we need to provide security for the Iraqi people - not gun-toting commandos prowling the streets, but living with them like UK peacekeeping forces do. We need to change our agreements with companies like Blackwater to make them liable for their actions. We need to get the Iraqi people on the side against the insurgents, which is something we've not done too well. And we need for CNN to start showing some positive aspects of the war too - they're not helping things by providing the insurgents with a propaganda machine (and it's not JUST CNN...). I hope that gives you a better idea of where I'm coming from... I look forward to your next rebuttal.