[browardchad]

Suppressing the enemy's ability to score points in the media and damage the economy--as much as blowing up a bridge in the romantic warfare of the pass--with an fear-response from the masses has to be achieved by the good guys. We completely screw the bad guys up when we blur their message

That was exactly the rationale behind the Clinton administration's minimizing of attacks as "isolated incidents." The result? 9/11.

How many human lives are we willing to sacrifice in "suppressing the enemy's ability to score points?"

[AmericanInTokyo]

Consider this (and it is an adapted point of another observation I posted on FR).

If so much as ONE AMERICAN CITIZEN standing in line at a United Airlines counter in Manila, Philippines was gunned down by a lone, Filipino Muslim who was later gunned down, would the US State Department declare that:

HATE CRIME?

ISOLATED INCIDENT?

RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE?

America has a terrible double standard that is going to make it an enemy of many good allies. We restrain Israel for going after terrorist cells which we most certainly would have done ourselves. We call terrorism something else because Americans were not killed and it was at a foreign carrier's counter.

We are asking for it in the court of world opinion, IMHO.