Could backlash against the war on terror actually lead more people to become terrorists?

Yes

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by Hibernianscribe

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President Bush's Global War on Terror has created more terrorists than ever in history because America failed to recognise the many rival and hostile factions of militant Islam and made the fatal error of fighting them all in Iraq.
Terrorism cannot be defeated by military means alone. Muslims who attack the West in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Europe are not committed fanatics, instead they are mostly young men alienated by foreign invasion, corrupt governments, local factions and bitterness over unemployment due to globalisation or they glory in the dignity of combat.US Armed Forces in Afghanistan graphically describe industrial scale Al-Qaeda casualties with firefights continuing interminably. Locals working in the fields rushed home to get their weapons to join in the fight. Are these locals terrorists?

In Iraq, the inevitable cycle of international intervention and inevitable rejection generated more recruits for Al-Qaeda, surprisingly. America
has learned a bitter lesson and hopefully this will influence President Obama's policies in the Middle East.

The much lauded U.S. Armed Forces Commander in Iraq, General Petraeus recognised the disenfranchisement of the Sunni Islamic Army (former Iraqi Republican Guards) and promptly paid these former Sunni soldiers more to fight Al-Qaeda than Al-Qaeda paid them to kill American soldiers. This resolution of conflict meant former Sunni killers were allied with US armed forces on the streets of Baghdad. The surge worked.

The warfare Al-Qaeda initiated with the 9/11 attack cost America $3 trillion to date. The military superiority of the United States is severely tested with some 30,000 severly injured veterans and 4,000 servicemen killed. The civilian cost to Iraq is estimated at between 60,000 and 600,000 civilians killed and 2.5 million internally displaced Iraqis. America must adapt short term costly combat commitments to active engagement with threatened societies, coupled with involving local residents in a containment approach. Afghanistan
is worth fighting for because a greater Pashtunistan', including strife torn Pakistan, controlling nuclear weapons is unacceptable to world peace.

Success will come from American troops remaining in Afghanistan for many years, through building relationships with the tribes and enticing militants into mainstream society. Afghans compare the cruel but just Taliban with the remote and corrupt Hamid Karzai, Kabul government. President Karzai includes drugs warlords in his alliances.

Iraq will endure because it is a viable democracy. Afghanistan, however, is riven by divided strategies and command. The lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq prove it is counter productive to challenge Al-Qaeda in its own natural hinterland in a culture thoroughly alien to western minds. Counter terrorism activities must support a domestic military and local counter intelligence response, spies! The fundamental error that neither British nor American forces are prepared to learn Pashtun is still perplexing.

The wisdom gained from 8 years of western military and political folly in Iraq and Afghanistan must be applied now.
Former terrorists become future moderates. This fact is proven in the Northern Ireland Peace Process.

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