[CaptainHaplo]

Well give it to UnderSea - at least he had an alternative. Which BTW Undersea - one thing your policy does not seem to consider - is the fact that there are nuclear states in the middle east - Israel being one of them, so leaving her to fend for herself would do nothing more than insure that nuclear weapons were used. Not to mention you have Pakistan and India bothbeing nuclear powers, with Iran well on its way.

But I guess turning our back and a blind eye to the middle east so they can "fight amongst themselves" wouldn't cause a problem. Heck - at the least, all the nukes going off should at least stir up enough dust into the upper atmosphere to counteract whatever questionable global warming is going on.

Ok - granted I am taking a lighthearted jab at you here - but leaving nuclear states in a single region to blow each other up - especially when one has made it clear their domination plan is global and not merely regional, is way more dangerous long term to our security than what I have proposed.

Now - the one thing that I can't quite figure out here is how come no one seems to want to think about history and the definition of war. Undersea says "you do this and its jihad till one side or the other is destroyed". Well - last time I checked - war meant someone gets their ass kicked till they either give up or die. Right now they are willing to fight that fight to the death - as death is not something they seem to fear. Apparently the biggest problem with folks like Aramike is they want to fight back - but only in ill-defined, half measures.

Look - this is war. Sure it would be nice if you could identify the good people from the bad. But tell me - did Spaatz, Eaker, Doolittle, Mitchell, or Harris lose sleep when they ordered bombing raids on cities? They knew that many innocents would be killed - and not just GERMAN non-combatants. Much of the forced labor forces and their families were also killed. They also knew that many of the Germans killed were not hard line Nazi's or even combatants. *For the record - most average germans were alot like my own grandfather - when asked if he was a Nazi - with a gun at his head - he said yes.* But there wasn't a way to tell the good guys from the bad.

There isn't today in the trenches either. You can't look at a man and know by his clothes that he is a combatant. You can't see that 5 minutes before he was prepping an IED to kill you and your friends with. The difference is today we have weapons designed to take out that identified threat - but our enemy doesn't stand out. There is no big factory to blow up - no armored column to strike.

We bombed cities in WW2 to break the will of the enemy to fight. Under the views you all have expressed - such a tactic is the most dangerous to pursue. Let me explain clearly why its not. Unlike a country - your not facing a national presence. Your facing a people that can blend in. They are not afraid of death on their own terms. They are however afraid the people they hide behind will turn and point them out.

Bomb Najaf, Medina, Mecca or Karbala - and yes - muslims everywhere would unite. Ok - fine - what are they going to do? This policy is way deeper than you guys are seeing. First off - these people may be nuts - but they are no fools. They know they cannot stop us if we decided to wipe every holy place off the face of the earth. So if they want to go toe to toe - they stand to lose all they hold sacred. This does 2 things. It makes it impossible for the extremists to continue to carry out their attacks with anonymity because the "moderate" muslims are going to lose the will to fight when they stand to lose what they see as irreplacable. Would it take more than one city? Maybe. I don't know. But I can bet you it wouldn't take more than three. The "moderates" would finally stand up and rid themselves of the extremists in an effort to preserve their religious heritage.

Secondly - it would shatter the "extremists" power foundation. After all - they preach "Allah Ackbar" or "God is Great" - and promise 7 virgins to every martyr with how much credibility after the fools they want to use just saw one of their "holy cities" reduced to rubble. After all - kinda hard to believe that Allah can conjure up 7 virgins in the afterlife for ya if he can't even protect his own holy sites from the "infidels" and their explosives.

You take away the credibility of the extremists, you force the so called "moderates" to do whatever it takes to gain peace, which will be selling out the extremists and policing their own (for once) - and guess what - the world would be a darn site more secure.

My one regret here is - it seems that everyone that so far has responded doesn't want to prosecute a war on terror - they want a half war, a police action - whatever you want to term it - they want half measures - not a way to force the enemy to stop. Sure its cruel and heartless, sure its not nice and quick and easy - but if this could be solved that way - a few cruise missiles would have done it along time ago. If you cannot understand that they intend this as a war - they don't plan on stopping until OUR way of life is gone - then you don't understand the war on terror at all. UnderSea already said it - its until one side or the other is destroyed - or submits to the will of the other. They have the will to fight it like that. What this country needs is a leader who has the fortitude to fight a war the same way. Until then - we are like the confederacy - trying to defend everywhere without any hope of victory - merely trying to survive and stave off the inevitable defeat for another day. We either take the gloves off and fight, or we fight with our hands tied. One way we can win - the other - we are doomed to fall.

You take your pick.

As for me being a "homegrown terrorist" as a flip side to their coin - I guess the leaders of this country that made all those hard choices, from president to the leaders of the fighting men - all were nothing more than homegrown terrorists too. After all - they ordered actions that killed untold numbers in the pursuit of security for their country. Dropping the Bombs on Japan - the carpet bombings of both Germany and Japan, the sinking of merchants ships with innocent merchant mariners on them, nothing but despicable acts of terror by thugs in uniform or elected office in this country huh?

Previous generations were willing to stand up against evil and defeat it. It seems this one is more than willing to fall to it instead. A damned shame.