How To Kill a Starfish?

[Ankesh]

Phil and all - thanks for asking about me. I'm doing fine. Just went and lighted candles today outside a few of the places that were affected.

Michael and all - thanks for giving words to my feelings. "Soak ALL bullets in pig fat. Then go Terrorist Hunting." That was exactly my thought when the bastards started shooting in Mumbai.

But unfortunately I dont think thats a realistic or even an ideal solution. Here is why... (paraphrasing from Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom)

A usual organization has a hierarchy. They are like a spider. Cut off a leg of the spider and you end up with a 7 legged spider. Cut of its head and the spider dies.

But terrorists organizations don't have such hierarchies. They are not set up as spiders. But rather star fishes. Cut off an arm of a star fish and it'll grow a new arm. And the arm will grow a whole new body too.

Just like star fishes, terrorist organizations have no single brain - no central command. But they have various cells of various sizes.

If you go and hunt them down, they'll just re-grow back.

So how do you kill a starfish?

Only 2 ways:

1. You burn the entire starfish together. Unfortunately its not possible to kill all the terrorists together.

2. You suffocate them. Cut their oxygen.

Whats oxygen for terrorists?

i. Their belief that what they are doing is good for Islam. And that they will go to heaven if they die.

ii. Their source of revenue. With which they buy arms.

So how can we replace their faulty beliefs and ideologies? And how can we dry their revenue sources? If you have any smart ideas, I would love to hear them.