A good geopolitical and military analysis. About as well stated as anything I’ve seen since the war started.
The problem is that no matter how sound the reasoning, expecting the American people to support and sustain such a strategy for the requisite time is going to go down as one of the most monumental miscalculations in the history of our country, maybe in the history of human war making.
Two, three years, yeah, we’ll support the troops; only a fool would expect that the voters and their representatives would back such a plan for the 10 or 20 years that would be necessary for it to really work.
Kill everyone and break everything; if the task can’t be accomplished by doing those, in a months to few years time frame with an absolutely explicit and attainable definition of success it isn’t going to work, no matter how brilliant the strategy, how heroic the troops or how grievous the event we are avenging.
In the case of an Islamic country that had a monarch or dictator, the best thing to get it to be more friendly is “install and back a new king.” That was the Shah approach which worked great until people got squeamish about how the omelettes and sausage were made.