[dinkumthinkum]

With respect, this is such a terrible position. This view basically says that we should accept terrorists regimes to do what they want because if they don’t, they will commit terrorisk against us. That is not the right way to deal with bad actors.

[tsol]

Sounds more like he's saying killing civilians naturally makes people mad at you. We shouldn't avoid talking about this because of this fear of terrorism. In fact some would say when army kils someones family, they will look at us as the terrorists and demand it not be accepted like you

[protocolture]

With respect, this is such a terrible position. This view basically suggests you should bomb civilians in terrorist countries, because that reduces terrorism somehow. Despite the whole GWOT making that lie obvious to everyone.

[fastasucan]

Wait, are you talking about the US government now?

[jacquesm]

You should live up to your nick and do some of that thinking. I never said we should accept 'terrorist[s] regimes'. But there is a massive difference between actually doing something about terrorism and bombing large numbers of civilians in the hope that the problem goes away. That only results in more terrorists as has been amply borne out by history to date.

You don't deal with bad actors by becoming a bad actor yourself. If the US really wanted to deal with 'the terrorists' (by your definition) then they should start with ensuring that there is no risk of increasing their numbers as a result of the operations performed. Failing at that is an automatic own goal because now you've turned a problem into a larger problem.

Terrorism is the typical response of any group that isn't able to wage war in the preferred manner of the perceived enemy. But nicely declared wars between nation states are an imaginary thing, every nation that ever went to war pretended they had the moral high ground, brought a suitcase full of fig leaves and usually some holy scripture or some other book to prove that theirs was the just cause. Solving that takes unity, time, massive amounts of money and the ability to introspect. If you don't bring all of those (or even none of those) to the table then the only thing you will achieve is that you will end up in a (possibly much) worse place than where you were before.

Lumping everybody in Iran under the 'terrorists' banner is just as stupid as lumping everybody in Israel under the 'zionists' banner. Neither is going to lead to a resolution, all you will end up achieving is more war, more people dead and another century or so added to this conflict. But I'm not surprised. Trump & Co are categorically incapable of planning anything that takes longer than a news cycle, whether it is making changes to the White House or trying to grab some more oil.