Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I can understand it but that doesn't mean it was the right response.
A couple of the lessons I take from the last twenty plus years of wars in the Middle East:
1. You eliminate terrorists through police action, special forces operations, and good diplomatic relations with countries that might otherwise be hosts for them (or that are hosts for them, like Pakistan)
2. You create more terrorists through ground wars with a lot of collateral damage - it's pretty clear that the Iraq war played a big role in the emergence of Daesh.
3. Active civ ops can play a huge role in minimizing support for terrorists.
It would be nice to see these lessons applied today.
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A nimble, surgical response takes too much time. The delay is taking some of the heat out of the event, but I don't see Israel satisfied with anything less than a spectacular repayment of the atrocity.
Even if we knew exactly where Bin Laden was prior to attacking Afghanistan, we were going to drop those enormous bombs that bored into caves and collapsed the lungs of anyone within a quarter mile of the blast. The horror show was the message - "You've fucked around; here's what finding out looks like."
But yes, inevitably it just breeds more terrorists. But what doesn't? What policy gets rid of them permanently? The only ones I've heard of that worked were: (1) Putin's handling of the Chechens. He'd start sending fingers, toes, and more of terrorists' families' to them until they stood down. And (2) Hafez Assad's playbook in the Hama Massacre - ring the terrorist neighborhood, kill literally everyone in it, and pave it flat afterward. Neither of these are available to Israel. Or any other sane nation.
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