[toast0]

A stable Iran seems to be doing a pretty good job of breeding terrorism, too though.

If we're being extremely generous, the goal of regime change would be to bring a new stability with economic prosperity and inclusion as well as more meaningful political inclusion, so as to reduce the amount of marginalized population with nothing to loose that are easy to recruit for terrorism.

Of course, when the nation building fails or is never even tried, it's pretty easy for recruiters to say "look around, they destroyed our country (with bombs or embargoes or tariffs or resource exploitation or offensive media), we have nothing to live for, and it's their fault; let's make them pay"

I don't think you can stop all terrorism, but if you want to put a dent in it, you need to give the broad population hope for prosperity, and you need to fulfill that hope on the regular.

[reillyse]

What if we instead we were just responsible for killing all of their kids, would that work? I could see that working in the US just randomly kill a bunch of peoples kids and that would calm everything down.

[platevoltage]

You've got to be kidding me. The US actively supports and runs interference for the biggest terror state in the Middle East right now. We are also buddy buddy with another country in the Middle East that dismembered one of our journalists and provided most of the 9/11 high jackers.