First of all, by using power and death, we will create more enemies than we kill. This is currently occuring in Iraq. Many times a child dies for any reason, the US gets blamed and the family (father, brothers, uncles) become our enemies. Iraq is a small country (relatively), 30 some odd million & the size of California. We do not have that place all tidied up and happy.
So if we use the same tactic in Iran, where there are 4 times more people and more elbow room imagine the problems & challenges.
Now consider over 1 billion muslims. We can't take them on, period. All the peen waving and chest pounding in the world will not make it happen.
We can't tolerate the behaviour of the extremists, as they are intent on wiping us out.
So we can't beat the fuck out of 15 to 20% of the worlds population as it is not localized in one spot, and not all of them are asswipes.
The biggest "terrorist" factories in the world are:
Iraq (due to what we have done, we've built a giant terrorist factory. The blame for that sits squarely on the ill concieved concept that we can cow 30 million -or- 1 billion people by force).
Pakistan - The Madrassas. Islamic schools. A large number of these are dedicated factories doing nothing but churning out terrorists. How do we deal with our "great ally" Pakistan, how do we (a) End that dictatorship (remember we're speading democracy here), (b) Stop the islamic schools from brain washing the youth and making terrorists.
Yemen - Tribal areas (out of our reach)
Somalia - We should covertly detonate a nuke in Mogadishu and blame it on Al Quida (say they musta had a nuke destined for Europe and it accidently went off).
Saudi Arabia - troublesome, we need their stability, yet they are religiously intolerant.
Iran - Our biggest threat economically. This fall they will launch the petroeuro, and it is as big of a threat to the US as any terrorist. It is effectively economic terrorism, and we can't strong arm them.
Afghanistan - Taliban and extremist residue.
Neither the left nor the right has the complete solution. Our main problem right now is that these 2 ends of the spectrum are unable to work together towards a viable solution which utilizes the skills and abilities of both. Frankly, our inabiity to accept input from the left, and inabliity to accept that we need to bomb the shit out of stuff at times to solve this is our gravest danger.
Until we stop berating liberals, and flamebasting conservatives, and work together to utilize the abilities of both ideologies we will continue to not be able to put an end to terrorism.
