According to Rick Santorum, Glenn Beck, and others, this is the decisive factor!
And the answer is: as soon as an incident occurs we should threaten the responsible terrorism supporting regime, immediately.
We tell them that we'll seek actively "a regime change" with ALL options on the table. One caveat, though: we HAVE TO deliver, no ifs or buts about it!
We have to train and support overtly a "terrorist insurgency" made out of the regime's opponents, whoever they are. And no, democracy isn't a prerequisite or a requirement. Provide the insurgents with cash, weapons, explosives, and if need be; surgical air strikes taking out the regimes government in session.
They already declared, in many quarters, their desire to wipe us out. All what we have to do is to hold them accountable for their words and act in self-defense.
Obviously, this is considered very radical and against what we stand for, however, we'll never beat the terrorists by being nice and reasonable to them. This is taken as weakness and not that we're upholding our values and the rule of law.
No country will ever beat systematic terrorism precipitated by religious fervor without resorting to terrorism of its own (by our standards, that is.) You have to be a more ruthless "terrorist state" than the other terrorist states to beat them. Simply put: it's survival of the fittest.
So, instead of "we can't do this or that..that will cost a lot of bloodshed, etc.", it's our survival, stupid!
Apparently, the word survival is no longer in our lexicon!
"We tell them that we'll seek actively 'a regime change' with ALL options on the table. One caveat, though: we HAVE TO deliver, no ifs or buts about it!"
I agree with everything you wrote! These people are willing to die; they want to die killing us. Why do the people in our government have to be so blockheaded about what appears to be more and more obvious every single day?
Nancee