Quote:
Originally Posted by jlomon
This is my point. If you start nuking things, all you do is guarantee militant Islam the hearts and minds of former moderates. Right now OBL and his Wahabbist buddies are still seen as being part of a lunatic fringe to many other Muslim sects who may be sympathetic to his struggle against "the Great Satan" but cannot reconcile his methods with their interpretation of Islam. You'd be driving the moderates right into his arms, which only increases the number of fronts you have to fight on.
You aren't ever going to convince hardliners (of any stripe and belief) of anything. They're dyed-in-the-wool supporters who can't be reasoned with. You want to keep the more moderate viewpoints on the sidelines instead of giving them a reason to join the party. Using a nuclear weapon would be OBL's recruiting wet dream.
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Exactly right. US hawks are under the impression we can whoop all a$$, at all times. I'm trying to think if there was another great power in the recent past, a power with the strongest military in the world by far, a country that thought it could identify legitimate threats and take them out and prevail every time.
BTW, recent past is last 100 years as far as I'm concerned.
Oh yeah, there was one country like that. They ended up spreading themselves too thin and pissing off about 80 - 90% of the rest of the world such that all those "weaker" nations joined together and put a stop to that crap.
It'll never happen here though...
