Of course an ideology can be eradicated, but it's taken extreme measures in the past.

Want to end ISIS overnight? Kill 1/3 of the entire male population in ISIS controlled territory, and Flatten Raqqa. Emasculate Islam by bombing the Kaaba and killing any anti-Western Imam living around it as well. Jail anyone who protests against the strikes, and profile Muslims looking for people plotting revenge attacks.

But we as a society find it unpalatable for good reason, and instead we need a more moderate solution that mostly fixes the problem without causing too much destruction/restricting too many freedoms.

A travel ban won't work because most terrorists are home grown, profiling doesn't really work because people can always slip through the cracks, and we're not willing to put up with even more NSA spying.

Really, it's a tough question with no answer, but the best solution seems to be to help Arab forces end ISIS, while simultaneously doing community outreach to try and force integration. Many Muslim traditions have a very hard time reconciling/integrating with western culture (just look at how pissed people get when they see someone wearing a veil) so total integration probably isn't possible without forcing a change in the religion itself, similar to what the new pope's trying to do for Christianity.

But we as a society find it unpalatable for good reason, and instead we need a more moderate solution that mostly fixes the problem without causing too much destruction/restricting too many freedoms.

Not only from ethical point of view butt also from practical point of view. If we take these measures other minorities will be afraid and plunged into radicalism so the circle would continue until only Breivik and Heidi Klumm stays alive.

would you like it if your own friends and family were being spied on secretly because some people thought they were affiliated with groups with "dented reputations"?

Not just my friends or family but I myself, ... I really would love it because it would mean the police are vigilant and doing their job. Eventually all innocents would be found clean and left alone. Thats better than whats happening now. Police in many western countries do prevent a lot of attacks but are also reactionary to many others. And this is when it hurts

Terrorists have to succeed once to make the headlines, the police have to get it right all the time to save lives. Under that kind of pressure I don't mind being spied upon. It would be naive to get twitchy about your freedom and being spied upon and then mourn later when ISIS succeed

Do you know that some of those who carried out the recent attacks in the UK were reported to the police for their extreme radical actions. But something held the police back. That something hangs between protecting people's freedom, political correctness and lack of funding because there are now fewer police around than there used to be to monitor and keep track of extremists properly, so they are now cutting corners

@deltaKshatriya you kept mentioning funding. I can't even begin to list the amount that is spent extravagantly on vain stuff.

Again don't forget that this was written on the fly and I mentioned the list would need to be tested tweaked and modified to make them more practicable

So the main point here are that winning against terrorists means stopping their attacks permanently and this requires extra-ordinary measures. Sadly many of us are unwillingly to make the sacrifice required

do you lock the door to your house? why? I would wager that almost every single person that comes to your house does NOT want to do you harm....but there is the possibility that someone will. so you lock your door. and when someone comes to your door you look out the peephole, or you open it to see who it is. you vet them before you let them in your house. if you don't know who they are or you *can't* vet them because there is no reliable information about the individual then you close the door and don't let them in. why can't our country do the same?

because it is "racist". because it violates their constitutional rights? last I checked the US Constitution does not apply outside US territory to non-US citizens. If it does that is news to me and someone should alert China, North Korea, Russia...and well the whole world that they all better start adhering to the US constitution.

Now is this ethical? I will say it is an ethical gray area.

And if the US and other western Europeans would stop screwing in the affairs of those in the middle east then some of it would probably stop too. I make no illusion that we don't stick our nose in everything. But when s**t goes down, and genocides, mass atrocities, dictators/others mass killing of civilian populations...who does the world always ask to go in and help. Then the rest of the world generally wants the US to intervene. So they want our nose in it. And when we don't (Syria...mostly but we do *some* covert stuff there) the world it like WTF. Why aren't we putting an end to it (like the famous chemical weapons red line from Obama that didnt stick). But of course, that then pisses off the ones doing the genocide/mass killings.....

So you can't win that one when everyone wants you out of their business, except for when they want all your foreign aid money, except for when they want you to defend them, except for when they are being slaughtered.

This is my last one in this thread. I don't say I have all the right answers and it is important to listen to others point of view without just yelling names and labels. Unfortunately, that is how the US works now.

And for the programming comparison above, I would elect new members on the board of the company that would change the policy that allows the removal of the offending library. Then to make a policy that since the library continually caused us to crash, and the company we got it from refuses to fix it then we would accept no future libraries from them. The ones we already have with that company we will just deal with until they expire. Or I would change companies.....do they speak English in Iceland?

A country and a house are pretty poor analogies. No house has to function the way a government does nor do houses have to deal with people wanting to enter very often. Your analogy seems to act as if people are attempting to 'break in' to a country, which is illegal immigration, which isn't what you have a problem with in this particular instance and issue.

Why can't our country "lock the doors"? Plenty of reasons not to. First one is that it won't do any good. Most terrorism has been done by citizens, not foreigners. Secondly, where does it end? Say you stop some Arab guys from immigrating. What about guys like in the Boston Marathon bombings? There's Muslims in many parts of the world. How will you stop them all from entering? Moreover, how much do you want to compromise in the name of safety? And I don't mean just in terms of travel bans. This isn't a question you have answered.

What I see in your posts is someone who's bought into the mass hysteria the Far Right has generated over terrorism. The problem is nowhere near the scale you are told to believe nor is it an existential threat. I'm guessing you're American, given the reference to the Constitution. I can, to an extent, understand the European desire to hold back immigration since there is quite a bit of immigration to Europe coming from the Middle East, even though I do not entirely agree with it. What reason do you have for concern? America does not have anywhere near the amount of immigration Europe gets. What are you so damned frightened of?

I will also reiterate, I do believe that we should not accept anyone and everyone into the country. The US does not do this as is. Have you ever looked into the process for immigrating to the US? It's almost a lottery at this point. It's pretty damned tough for people to enter the US.

And finally, you continuously claim that people don't listen to viewpoints anymore, and that only labels and PC are thrown around, yet many people, including myself and Oberon Command, here have offered valid criticisms and you have not engaged in any dialogue. You've only reiterated the same points again. Since this is your last post in this thread, I'm going to leave this point here.

Chiming in:

Many, if not all, of the terror attacks are perpetrated by people born in the country they are harming.

I think the problem is that many people today feel isolated in society. This isolation turns to spite and this gives terror groups the opportunity to turn them against their own country. We need more community centres and things for people to do to help them form solid relationships in their community - they need to be cheap to access aswell.

Go to the root cause.

Certainly there is some issue somewhere in society that someone feels motivated enough to engage in actions that will lead to certain death for no particularly good gain. Sure, the ideology side exists, but clearly it's exploiting something else. Integration has failed somewhere with people on both sides, as these are not foreigners but rather our own people, who were born and raised here. Now I don't claim that it's 'our fault'. Integration is always a 2 sided issue. There needs to be outreach on both sides and efforts to be made. And in general, we must start somewhere. Most of the time, people just want to jump the gun and claim that either these are 'criminals'/isolated incidents or that Islam hates us. Neither is really true. Nobody is born a criminal/terrorist. Something must have lead to it, and that there is the root cause.

Of course an ideology can be eradicated, but it's taken extreme measures in the past.

Want to end ISIS overnight? Kill 1/3 of the entire male population in ISIS controlled territory, and Flatten Raqqa. Emasculate Islam by bombing the Kaaba and killing any anti-Western Imam living around it as well. Jail anyone who protests against the strikes, and profile Muslims looking for people plotting revenge attacks.

But we as a society find it unpalatable for good reason, and instead we need a more moderate solution that mostly fixes the problem without causing too much destruction/restricting too many freedoms.

A travel ban won't work because most terrorists are home grown, profiling doesn't really work because people can always slip through the cracks, and we're not willing to put up with even more NSA spying.

Really, it's a tough question with no answer, but the best solution seems to be to help Arab forces end ISIS, while simultaneously doing community outreach to try and force integration. Many Muslim traditions have a very hard time reconciling/integrating with western culture (just look at how pissed people get when they see someone wearing a veil) so total integration probably isn't possible without forcing a change in the religion itself, similar to what the new pope's trying to do for Christianity.

The eradication solution doesn't really work, since it's not really killing an ideology so much as it's basically genocide. Moreover, that'll definitely lead to some sort of catastrophic war that'll lead to more damage than you'd think. Do you really think that others will keep quite over this sort of thing? And what's to stop some others from banding together and doing the same thing to the US?

It is a tough question with no good solution, sure. But knee jerk, fear induced, hysteria based reactions are only going to deteriorate the situation that much more.

But we as a society find it unpalatable for good reason, and instead we need a more moderate solution that mostly fixes the problem without causing too much destruction/restricting too many freedoms.

Not only from ethical point of view butt also from practical point of view. If we take these measures other minorities will be afraid and plunged into radicalism so the circle would continue until only Breivik and Heidi Klumm stays alive.

Then there's this point. This won't exactly lead to anything pretty. Just brutal warfare. It's not a solution.

EDIT: Goddamit, I keep posting and others post at the same time and I miss it. Anyhow, as OberonCommand stated, bombing the Kaabah is asking for a brutal war that will never end.

grumpyOldDude, funding is just one point, but in general, being safe is one thing, but how far do you go? Terrorism and ISIS are not an attack on countries: they aren an attack on the value system of a country. The whole goal is to deteriorate the country to these points of extreme measures. It's not a question of sacrifices, it's a question of at what point do we stop? There will always be 'threats'. Some can be real, some can be invented. Do you really trust governments to give back power once the 'threat' is gone? I understand that the stuff you wrote is random, but even if we don't go to those, look at the sort of surveillance already conducted. Look at the rights already given up. And again, there's our points on alienation. Many extreme measures mean alienating Muslims even more. Moreover, no extreme measures are perfect. There will be a fair number of innocents caught up. And imagine the amount of fear and paranoia that this would generate. Where does it end?

Not just my friends or family but I myself, ... I really would love it because it would mean the police are vigilant and doing their job. Eventually all innocents would be found clean and left alone. Thats better than whats happening now. Police in many western countries do prevent a lot of attacks but are also reactionary to many others. And this is when it hurts

You'd be tortured until you confess you are Allah himself... because of a mistake or someone reported you because you were unsympathetic. I grew up in a country with that "janitor society".

Also it's not likely that our society and science will get to a level soon enough (for solving the urgent problem of terrorism) to avoid the collateral damage that a police state would mean. A collateral damage that would turn even some of the Christian übermensch snow white hetero people towards radicalism and opposition.

Edit: Internets. That's a problem. Pretty much all these attackers are young people. People at their late adolescence (at least mentally). Pretty much we were all rebels at this age. But we didn't have internet, so it was all played out in our heads or in a small futile group.

Just an example: I, for one, was excited and not horrified by the WTC attack. I was stupid as fuck (age 16) but my stupidity had no effect at all, and turned into unlimited pacifism. I don't know what would have happened if I had found a group that could control my otherwise typical feelings and thoughts.

So my solution: kill the internet and all people between the age of 15 and 25.

I still don't speak English and can't form a comprehensive point, sorry.

I think the problem is that many people today feel isolated in society

That. And extremism only creates more isolation -- both the terrorism type, and the right wing knee jerk responses to it. Yay, we've got a violent feedback loop now, with no regard for addressing the actual underlying problem in our own back yards.