How not to deal with hostage takers...

A lesson in strategy

from PolMach Forums

Imagine you have a town full of hostage takers.  These hostage takers aren't quite normal but they want to take over city hall and impose a totalitatarian government on their citizens, right after purging a great deal of them.  Their one demand is that the police leave the town and leave them alone and let them do things their way.  Some, possibly even many, of the people in the town like these people despite constantly getting killed by one of them.  The hostage takers have even killed a good deal of policemen in their quest to take control of the town.

Due to the fact that they are losing men the police threaten to pull out of town if the hostage takers don't stop their actions.  They realize what will happen if they do this.  But It doesn't matter that they are doing some good, saving some lives in that town, keeping some symbolance of order.  It doesn't matter that many will be killed after they pull out.

This shows the hostage takers that victory is in sight and they increase attacks because of this.  They think, "The fools, pulling out if we DON'T stop attacking."  Many more are killed and much of the progress is lost.  Because of this the police pull out shortly after and leave the citizens to their own devices.

 

 

 

So how did you like my story, anyone get what its a metaphor of?

democrat
4,461 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
Oh yes. And you will probably get a lot of arguments from some that the hostage takers have the RIGHT to be there, and the police do not. And some will even go so far as to say that the police should pull out as saving their lives is more important than the lives of the town citizens.
Reply #2 from PolMach Forums Top
To the first argument I would have to ask that if it was your town being taken hostage, would you care if the police came from out of town to help out, probably not. To the second argument I would have to call these people racis... ummm policeist. What makes the policemans lives more important then the citizens lives. And yes I know these aren't actually your arguments.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from PolMach Forums Top
Nice metaphor right there and remberence of history to boot. This explains what went on in the vietnam war and the consequences of pulling out of the conflect. Along with what is and very likely could happen in iraq. Now let's see how many people will pounce on saying it's a dum call to prevent the hostage takers from taking over.
Reply #4 from PolMach Forums Top

This is a terrible metaphor. If you're assuming the town is Iraq, the Iraqis don't want American protection anymore because they have shown they can't protect the Iraqi citizens from looting. Now they want a Hussein-style strongman to come to power, a total flip from 6 years ago and only possible because of the incompetence of the CPA and its various replacements in dealing with the invasion and insurgency. If the town is the United States, when has there ever been an Iraqi attack on US soil, and how could there possibly have been while Saddam was in power, considering the state of Iraqi infrastructure at the time, much of which had been bombed back to pre-Saddam era thanks to the constant bombings by the US during the 90s (which, ironically, were only carried out because the United States believed that Iraq would descend into chaos if Saddam fell)? The farthest any Iraqi SCUD ever fell was Israel, and no Iraqis participated in the 9/11 attacks, nor has any evidence surfaced that Saddam Hussein's government helped them. I'm not suggesting I have the answers to what is happening in Iraq, but certainly nothing is being solved while the Iraqi army is using the American Army as a crutch, or while the American government is arming the Shi'ite militias to kill the Sunni insurgents in the same way we armed the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan to kill the Soviets.