Quote:
Originally Posted by Sigaba
...the core question of the Cold War.
What is wrong with an approach that is informed by the following sensibility?
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If I'm following you- we'd publicly announce a strategy to counter terrorist attacks that would lead to terrorist calculations of possible war outcomes under any contingency always resulting in outcomes so unfavorable to them that there would be no incentive for their leaders to initiate an attack. Is that right?
The thoughts I have on that are:
- would have to have strong home support for that kind of response (I'm assuming the response would be so great as to work- sort of like nuking or totally destroying the capital of whatever country the attacks came out of?)
- we'd probably have to display the response at some point (I'd argue Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave powerful examples to the USSR as to what we were willing to do)
- we'd have to assume no autonomous sleeper cells would do things on their own and that the terrorist leaders are rational
Although I think the thought is good- I'm not sure the other factors hold that would make it feasible/valid. Maybe if we lost hundreds of thousands to a WMD attack. Anything short of that and I'd argue that the political will at home isn't sufficient to pursue such a strong deterrent strategy. Although, it would be much cheaper, faster, appealing (to human nature), sensical, strategic, etc.
Some have argued that we can't do COIN in Moslem countries anyway- so this would free us up from an impossible mission and allow us to focus on conventional warfare. Too bad we didn't think of this right after 9/11. We could have just knocked Taliban strongholds back into the homo habilis era and warned more would follow if they so much as showed their faces again. Would that have worked?
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