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Originally posted by lasersailor184
You sure as hell can win the war on Terror.
It's called Total War. The other side loses when they realize how ****ed they are because they messed with us.
I bet an Nuclear ICBM doing circles above Mecca would win the war pretty ****ing quick.
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Have you ever wondered why, The U.S., with the ability to destroy the planet 20 times over, has NOT used a Nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Because the court of world opinion would be against us, completely and utterly.
Any kind of genocide, or First-strike usage of Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical weapons, even by the U.S., would have dire consequenses, indeed.
We could expect the U.N. to turn against us, giving a country like China the Oppurtunity it needs to knock us off the Pedestal and become the #1 superpower on the planet. We could face an economic embargo, which we are ill-prepared to survive. That, at the least, would plunge us into another Great depression. Only this time, With Most of our manufacturing industry gone overseas already anyway, we would face breadlines full of out-of-work IT techs and medical assistants...
The terrorists' know this. They know that our responses to anything they do will be restricted, that we can't just fire up a Trident-class SSBN and start wailing away...And I'd have to say, they counted on it.
IF the current administration had set about their task correctly, confined the war to Al Queda targets, Stayed away from the things that made themselves a spectacle(Such as Dick Cheney-Halliburton, Lying about WMD, ignoring other potential threats like N.Korea, etc.) And simply going in, doing the job, and leaving, then we might have been able to claim a victory. However, It can now be said that the job was bungled. Instead of keeping the conflict in the context of justice, leaving our other adversaries in the world to take note, we've only exposed our weaknesses. They know that we can get suckered into long, protracted insurgency's with relative ease. They know our military's weaknesses such as Manpower, and incetive. They know that the American people, Even after an atrocity such as 9/11, can sway back into apathy if They believe a just cause has gone rotten.
The worst thing is, they now know, because of the changes we've made since 9/11, is that terrorism works.
They know that with passing of Bills such as the Patriot act, that they can influence the altering of our own constitution. That they could do something that might result in the suspension of something that we as americans find holy, such as the Bill of rights.
Really, right now, among the options on the table, Simply withdrawing the troops is not the best answer...But neither is it the worst.
An american withdrawal will most likely result in a Pro-Islamic regime in Iraq inside of 2-5 years. Of course, what that does for stability in the region, is redundant. What we DON'T want, is for all of the governments in the region to align themselves under one banner(Islam.) Economic embargoes of Oil would be disastrous to the U.S., As anyone who buys gas on a daily basis can tell you.We're already experiencing inflation as a result of higher energy prices, and It's something the Government can't fight very easily(Because the main problem is supply.)
To sum up, No, we can't simply "kill 'em all", This situation will be painful to resolve.
