There are alot of lukewarm conservatives on this site whose foreign policy 'expertise' is garbled with their sense of 'humanity' for foreign terrorists and their families. They don't seem to realize that smart weapons were made by military and former military to ensure a target was destroyed, not to lessen collateral damage or save civilians. The military during WWII did not like using 200+ tons of bombs to take out one factory. But ever since Vietnam, the media and liberals have caused simple minded politicians to lose focus of the task at hand whenever we have fought a war. That task being; destroy the enemy, demoralize the enemy, and ensure that the enemy will not even think of wanting to fight you again when you are done. Absolute victory. Now smart weapons are the so called humane weapons. They are being used correctly, but we have lost site of places like Dresden, where we leveled cities and crushed the enemy's will to fight. We haven't had a problem with the Germans or Japanese since WWII. Every damn time we turn around there is some pig islamic militant terrorizing some part of civilized society. The only reason we are in Iraq right now is because it was never done correctly under the first Bush. And it isn't being done correctly now. Iraq should be a smoking heap. Those people that did survive the war may resent us, but their fear would be far greater. And in time they would understand why we did what we did, just as the Germans and Japanese did. It's about our survival, nothing personal. The best way to break the enemy is to take everything he loves (family and way of life), or at the bare minimum let him know that what he loves is not off limits.
But God no, we cannot do that. That is inhumane. War is supposed to be pretty. We cannot even harm one civilian...that would be aweful. And we are 'better' than they are. Those types of beliefs are going to ensure that islam is a pain in our ass for a long time to come. Germany, Japan, took less than a decade to become a problem and cease to be a problem. When did Iran take American hostages? How long have the Israelis had to deal with the filth known as palistinians?
We need to nip this problem in the bud, but we won't. S, we are not gonna win the war on terror. This country will get hit again. And unfortunately, it may take a nuke here in this country to wake up the people of this country. These bastards are not going away until we put them in their place.
Sorry for the rambling, but people have lost site of history...like all history. Public schools the problems? I don't know. I just know that people think we can beat terrorism(Islam...the enemy) humanely. All I can so is 'told you so' later. Of course, some of the short term memory posters here...it wouldn't make a difference.