This is a battle that will be impossible to win if we do not change our tactics. Radical Islamists are fighting a religious war and target citizens to inspire fear. The US is trying to target INDIVIDUALS using geo politically approved methods. This will never achieve anything. We are using pruning shears when we should be using a chainsaw.
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.
To hell with world opinion we need to defend ourselves.
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...