Posted on 05/24/2004 6:02:26 PM PDT by SeenTheLight
In summary? The Israeli Defense Force's current strategy versus Hamas is a superb example of appropriate response.
Continue beheading the snake. >>
I cannot disagree with this--although I would restrict such operations to those who ACTIVELY SUPPORT through arms, funding, training, or other materials. A deli owner with a picture of Osama on the wall doesn't deserve to have his children shot, but he sure as hell deserves to be boycotted.
I do NOT want to see us doing a "kill 'em all, let god sort 'em out" approach because those doing the killing of 'em all will be sorted in precisely the same place as the jihadist murderers.
Well, I stumbled into this flame war a bit late, and there are reasonable morality points being made, but it was not too long ago that the USAAF firebombed and nuked enemy cities, and few Americans in the 1940s would have agreed that we were Nazis. One danger of the escalating deadliness of terrorists is that in the years and decades to come they will provoke a return to Total War as a regrettably acceptable strategy by mainstream citizens of countries capable of unleashing it. The occasional venting by people at FR about nuking Mecca, etc., is a symptom, not the problem. The U.S. changed the world beginning in the early cold war period by choosing not to unleash total war when it had the capability to do so.
On 9/11, interpreting the attack as equivalent to a WMD strike and retaliating with a nuclear strike against Kandahar might have been conceivable. What if actual nukes start going off in our ports and cities? How long will the public put up with it before advocating genocidal nuclear strikes?
I am not talking about a terror strike this year or next, but what happens in the years to come if we lose the initiative and will to prevail in the WOT, and radical Islam becomes the new Soviet Union -- only without the ability for us to deter. If Arab/Iranian/Pak/NK nukes start being used in terror attacks, then either a massive war of occupation of the Muslim world (and NK) or a nuclear war become the main options. Which will people prefer? That is why even the Arabs should want to expunge the terrorists and Nazis from their midst.
A Muslim said it was because they are afraid to speak out.
Unfortunately, the world is more complex, and, as they say in law school: "hard cases make bad law".
What about the harder cases, such as Palestinian women rejoicing and ululating over the massacre of Americans, what about the children (yes, children!) who were involved in dragging the body parts of westerners through the streets in Falluja?
If the moslems will not sort out the bad guys, how much risk are you willing to take erring on the side of caution in trying to sort them out?
Reasonable men and women can differ in answering these questions: those more willing to take risks with our citizens' lives will be more cautious of moslems lives, those more risk-averse, who are not willing to take such chances with our citizens' lives will place a significantly higher priority on eliminating the threat.
I don't think anyone wants to kill moslems simply for being moslems. Rather, I think many people want (rationally enough, perhaps) to kill everyone who is serious about, or supports those who are serious about, destroying Western civilization. Honestly, I think a more aggressive approach now will result in less total death (and especially fewer of us dead) than the more cautious approaches that will leave lots of those roaches alive to come back and try to kill us. But, as I said, reasonable people can differ on that.
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