Duchess,you are thinking to Al Queda style organizations in strictly military terms.You depict them as a sort of military branch of the islamic states.This is a great and bad mistake.Terrorist organizations are not armies.The Duchess of Zeon wrote: Trying to attack the actual organizations is useless, totally useless, though obviously necessary if they're actually inside the USA. We must remember however that our enemy is not terrorists alone, and that terrorists cannot operate without a support structure. That support structure is fully open to assault.
What we need to do is engage in ermattungsstrategie, as it is called in German. Operations of economic exhaustion, an effort designed to destroy enemy coalitions, remove sources of supply, and shake the spiritual will of the enemy.
Taking into account the fact that our military is very good at fighting conventional ground wars, but we are not as good at counterrorism or antiguerilla operations, our targets should therefor be the countries that fund, and provide spiritual support for, terrorist organizations.
We should use the massive ability of western countries to absorb damage in an extended conflict (What we've suffered so far is a pinprick at best) to resist the efforts of the terrorists while we use our armies, intended for stand-up decisive confrontations, to overthrow the governments of the countries that fund them, that provide spiritual will for their efforts, and that provide weapons and arms for their actions.
Then rebuilding those countries with secular and democratic governments, and if necessary with a period of MacArthurian Regency firstly, and instituting a full Marshall-type plan for those countries that we rebuild in that fashion (And thus demonstrating clear advantages to having your country worked over like that), we can remove the bite from terrorism.
In the short term terrorism would get worse. But it would never get bad enough to actually threaten the foundations of western civilization, and by the time we were done, the countries that provide the support to the terrorists would be gone, and would instead be allies. Funding, supplies, recruitment and reinforcement to terrorism - This would all be dried up or at least massively reduced.
And so by being willing to ride out the storm and endure the casualties while we rebuilt the middle east with force, when we had finished doing that, the terrorist organizations would "wither on the vine", so to speak, like the Japanese island garrisons in WWII, from the lack of support and interest in their causes.
That is a real and effectual strategy that we ought to be persuing; the problem is that it requires thinking in the long term, probably a fifty or even eighty year conflict, and accepting up to tens of thousands of casualties at home, and potentially hundreds of thousands or more abroad.
But if we don't do it, the problem will simply continue to get worse, because trying to counter the groups themselves will simply not work. Destroy one and another will indeed take its place.
Do you really expect that you will be able to starve them by invading all the countries on the US blacklist?
May I remember you that the algerians financed their war of independence
by self imposed taxation? Certainly you can eliminate the Saudi businnessmen.But you cannot put the entire economy of the muslim world under direct control.What are you suggesting will transform large portions
of the muslim populations into active Al Quaeda supporters.And please,
no "they already hate us" bullshit.From a PRACTICAL (not philosophical) point of view there is a substantial difference between saying "America deserve it" without raising a fist to help terrorists and start to funnel funds into terrorist organizations.Of course 9/11 style attacks may become a bit more difficult to organize at the beginning.But as recent facts have clearly demonstrated (sniper) you do not need millions of dollars worh of logistics to scare the hell out of a country.
Speaking about damage I do not understand what you mean.Terrorists cannot destroy the US in anycase,unless they manage to procure and smuggle in the US a trainload of nuclear weapons under your nose,which is somewhat doubtful.They cannot simply organize 9/11 on a mothly basis.So your fear for total destruction are rather misplaced.They can only cause that type of damage you deem as "acceptable".They cannot "threaten the
foundations of the western civilization",or better,not in the way you mean.
Then you are grossly overestimating your much vaunted "nation building"
capabilities.I suspect that this comes from watching Germany and Japan from the US.I do not deny that the US helped a lot,but speaking frankly the Germans and the Japaneses deserve the bulk of the credit.
You do not have the magic ability to turn a country from a hopeless shithole into a working western democracy by your mere presence.That is just propaganda.Afghanistan is and will remain a shithole.
You might be able to rebuild Iraq,but turning it into a working democracy is a different history.And for others countries on the US blacklist the perspectives are even worse.You will find yourself garrisoning countries where the population will see you as invaders,and terrorists as freedom fighters fighting against the neocolonial occupation,and certainly looting oil reserves as you (for you I mean you,Duchess) have already suggested in the past will not certainly weaken this impression.I am not saying that there will be waves of terrorist strikes and insurgencies everywhere.But those countries will remain hostile.
Bottom line,you strategy will increase popular suppor for the terrorist cause
in the hope to damage its logistical train.But popular support is exactly what terrorism really needs to prosper.The logistics lost can be at least partially restored by the increased popular support.
