Originally Posted by
surasak
The terrorists get a degree of sympathy because of actions like what we do in Iraq.
I'm telling you, we should have created special death squads whose sole mission in life was to seek out, infiltrate, and render these groups impotent. Nothing would destroy them quicker than being destroyed from the inside because lack of trust would prevent the groups from growing as members got killed. 500 or 1000 John Clarks would put shivers up the spines of every terrorist in the world (see if you know who I am referring to ;) ).
Fight fire with fire. No country in the world would have opposed such an idea.
Now that the insurgents have bogged us down it simply makes it easier for more to come along and bog us down even more. They know the public has no appetite for high casualty rates. That's why using the general military was a major blunder. We just assumed it would be a cakewalk. The problem is that if the general population doesn't want democracy it becomes a waste of time, resources, and money.
Can you imagine how much better off we'd be security-wise if we'd invested the $400 billion being spent on Iraq to improve border security, airline baggage checking, etc?