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Dusty,

I agree that you can defeat your enemy by making them lose their will to fight - the point I was trying to make was the complexities of guerilla war where you are never sure who the enemy really is make this tactic difficult to execute.

We are not at war with the state of Iraq. We've been there, done that, broke their will, and crushed them. War won.

We are now at war with a hotch potch of small groups of terrorists, some co-ordinated, some not, some religious nutters, some ba'athist reminants, some plain old gangsters, who live amongst a population who we are NOT at war with.

The test of who wins a guerilla war is in who the population feels affinity with more. If we bomb fallujah those not currently involved with the insurgents who loose family members will hate you and I, as much as you and I hated islamic radicalism every day since 9/11.

Cool heads. Target the leadership, the cells. Show patience and pride in restraint. Show moral authority, but never show weakness in resolve. This thing can be won, but there is no quick way to get there. Unlike the overthrow of Saddams state, this second war against the terrorist elements is one for special forces and intelligence, not for conventional armour and air power.

Cool heads. Target the leadership, the cells. Show patience and pride in restraint. Show moral authority, but never show weakness in resolve. This thing can be won, but there is no quick way to get there. Unlike the overthrow of Saddams state, this second war against the terrorist elements is one for special forces and intelligence, not for conventional armour and air power.

Again, we'll just have to agree to disagree, here. Ordinarily, I might agree that we should take the high moral road and allow the "cool heads" to prevail. However, that philosophy only kills more Americans. Trying to sort out the "good" Muslims from the "bad" Muslims only kills more innocent people. Striking at the leaders only creates a void to be filled by new leaders.

If we were to truly go after the terrorist leaders, in addition to getting OBL and the remainder of his henchmen, we would have to target the "radical" Islamic clerics (Q: How do you tell a "radical" Islamic cleric from a non-radical Islamic cleric? A: The non-radical Islamic cleric has laryngitis!).

If we target the "radical" Islamic clerics in order to get the terrorist leaders, we might as well take the battle to the arab street, because that's how they will interpret us targeting their clerics, anyway. The sad fact is that there is no nice, neat, clean way to fight a war against people in which the barbarity and total disregard of human life is totally rooted in 13th Century beliefs. This is part and parcel of why we are the focus of arab/Muslim hatred.

The progress that the western world has made since the 13th Century has left the arab world behind; trapped in an ancient culture that stopped progressing 700 years ago. When you look at it from their perspective, the very fact that they have been left so far behind the rest of the world is a threat to their way of life. Yet, they CHOSE the Islamic "religion" and the lifestyle that comes with it.

No, my good-hearted friend, trying to eliminate the head of this Medusa only creates more heads. There are fringe elements throughout the Muslim world that are only waiting for their 15 minutes of fame. They will only be horrified into stopping what they are doing when they have forced us to their level - a level which requires us to make indiscriminate attacks on a couple of large population centers and, by doing so, killing their mothers, sisters, grandmothers, nieces, nephews, sons, etc. This is a tactic that the Israelis have discussed taking because captured Palestinians have told them that as long as the battle is only waged against the combatants and NOT their families, they have no fear. This is one of the reasons that the Palestinians indiscriminately attack innocent Israeli women and children in their attacks. They hope to cause the Israelis to lose THEIR will to continue fighting them. The Israelis, like us, are unwilling to attack innocents and, as long as the terrorists know this, they will continue.

The war will end and the terrorists will stop when they know that we will not hesitate to take the battle to their grandma's house and end the Sunday afternoon baclava gatherings. Until then, as long as we surgically attempt to eliminate the Muslim leaders, this war will never end because every Muslim, sooner or later, will become a "leader". Let's just eliminate them all now and shorten the war. The cost in dollars and lives will be substantially less - just as it was in WWII when be bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

BTW, when I talk about American lives, please understand that it comes from a force of habit. By stating it that way, my intention is NOT to slight the contributions and sacrifices of our coalition allies and partners who have sustained casualties and losses as well. The British, Poles, Japanese, Norwegian, etc., partners who have joined with us in this war have made great contributions and we really do appreciate yours and their efforts.

"Cool heads. Target the leadership, the cells. Show patience and pride in restraint. Show moral authority, but never show weakness in resolve."

I totally agree, target the leadership and the cells - however, in this instance I consider 25 square blocks or so to be pin-point targeting.
I think that a rate of one thousand pound bomb per terrorist leader or cell would adequately show our resolve, get the message across to any town or village willing to harbor terrorists, and get it across pretty damn fast.