[Poohbah]

Let's try saturation bombing of Tehran, Riyadh, and Baghdad. Let's give the populous of the nations that oppose us a taste of the same fear that innocent people in the US felt on 9/11. These people need to know that if they continue to allow leaders who support terrorism to run their nations, they will be held just as accountable as the population of Dresden was for supporting the Nazi's.

As you pointed out, we've tried it.

It lengthened World War II about six months to a year, because the German people were convinced that we really were the barbaric murderers that Goebbels portrayed us as.

Hitler tried it in 1940--and an England that might have accepted a truce deal hunkered down and fought.

If Osama bin Laden had had the ability to do it on 9/11, he would have--and it would not have worked.

Your strategy hasn't worked, and will continue to not work because it flies against human nature. Drop a bomb in somebody's neighborhood, they tend to take it personally...

[goldstategop]

Our enemy IS radical Islam. Its a fact that also happens to be easily lost in the glare of political correctness and the heat of war. We must never forget who he is and what he stands for. That's all we need to know to win the war on terrorism.

[Allrightnow]

I absolutely disagree. It is the only thing that works. You mean to tell me that if we had not fire bombed Tokyo and followed it up with Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the Japanese would have surrendered? If we had not bombed the major cities of Germany proper that the Nazi's would have just stopped where they were?

The first reaction of a person after his neighborhood has been bombed is surely one of anger and outrage. Sooner or later though the most basic law of human nature will prevail; self preservation. Some of these people are willing to give their lives for Allah but my money's on most of them wanting to continue existing.

[Big Bunyip]

What sensible observations, Poobah. No matter how satisfying it would be to drop the Big One (or a whole bunch of them), it's not a panacea. As the coup de grace against Japan, it made sense.

But blitzing Germany didn't. As the Strategic Bombing Survey found after the war, it stiffened the resistance of the enemy civilian population and slowed the Allies' ground advance by destroying bridges and strewing the advancing victors' path with rubble. Targeted bombing, a la Afghanistan, is the policy that works. Turning Mecca into a pool of black glass, as some Freepers tirelessly urge, would confirm the sand goblins' propaganda.

[Savage Beast]

Oh poo-poo, Pooh! Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War II, and the overwhelming defeat of the Nazis and the Japanese Imperialists made possible the prosperous, democratic, constitutional miracles that are contemporary Japan and Germany. Nobody wants this, but it may take the overwhelming defeat of Islam and the reeducation of Islamic populations to assure peace and liberty in the world and the survival of the Western Democracies. The best thing that could happen to Muslims would be conversion to Christianity and establishment of Western Civilization world-wide--especially in the Islamic theocracies.

[MattinNJ]

Sorry Poohbah, but I agree with allrightnow. There may be a compromise that perhaps we can all agree on. Fly a huge sortie over Mecca and Medina to show them we can get them at will and then drop a low yield nuke in a desert (they seem to have plenty of sand). Then tell them the next time we suffer an attack they will be facing and praying to a giant mushroom cloud 5 times a day. I think that would put an end to all this running around trying to prevent an attack without having to kill any of them (Other than the ones who have already attacked us of course). Just a thought.