The thing that's so unusual about the al Qaeda/Hamas/Taliban/Jihadi thing is that there is no geographical enemy to single out, no one upstart country to stomp on, no single face to put on the boogeyman. There's just as many in Egypt and Pakistan and Saudi as there are in Iraq or Afghanistan, and quite a few probably in the US and Canada and all over South America, you name it. We can't get them all...can we?
It's like we're dealing with the Borg, one mass consciousness of millions of potential martyrs, all plugged in to the diabolical server somewhere. If we could just unplug that server...
Personally, I would rather be instantly vaporized than face what our terrorist enemies are facing. Although we're playing a game of catch-up right now, we're doing a very good job of it.
I am both proud and not a little concerned about the secret juggernaut we're building. It won't be too long before we can find, reach out and touch anyone, anyone, anywhere in the world, as easily as we can buy lunch. Hell, once we find them, we can kill them all with chemically-induced heart attacks if we wanted to.
Pity our enemies. While I'm sure they will hit us again, and hit us hard, we don't face anywhere near the sort of slow, painful extinction they do.
Geeky side note: Every Borg vessel has a "vinculum", a device which links the minds of the drones so they can act as one.
For Muslims, the "vinculum" could be abstractly considered to be the Quran and Sunna. On a more practical level, the local Mosque is a "vinculum".
And the Prime Vinculum is the Qaaba in Mecca. If it were destroyed by a 50-megaton urban renewal project, Muslims everywhere would be praying to a glass-lined crater five times a day, and expected to make their pilgrimage (the Hajj) to a radioactive pit.
That would be justified only if Islam itself were finally considered to be "the Enemy". I only see that happening if the war becomes couched in those terms. As it is, the U.S. has many, many honorable and powerful Muslim allies, and would be wise to keep them.
Just as fundamentalist Christians shouldn't be cause for destroying Christianity, fundamentalist Muslims shouldn't be cause for destroying Islam. I haven't always felt this way, but I finally figured it out.