Will you have the same opinion when L.A. is a smoking crater? Hmmm bad example. Ok, will you have the same opinion when Dallas was a smoking crater and there are 550,000 dead?
I'm am not, and have never been, in favor of nation building in the ME. Get in, destroy their military, universities, all manufacturing capability, oil production, and all other targets of opportunity. Then get out.
That tactic will not work, since they will regroup and you will have to go in again and again and again.
And each time they will learn from past mistakes and adapt and evolve.
Rather like in Vietnam, when American forces had to go in to the same territory over and over again to destroy the NVA and VC infrastructure.
If you destroy a infrastructure you have to replace it with another or a unfriendly one will grow back in its place.
After all if what you say is true for Iran it should be true for Iraq, since we have removed there WMD and WMC programme.
"I'm am not, and have never been, in favor of nation building in the ME. Get in, destroy their military, universities, all manufacturing capability, oil production, and all other targets of opportunity. Then get out."
i agree 100%. Unfortunately, political correctness has also found its way into war fighting strategy.