Yes, but did RP quote you correctly in saying: "Clearly, considerable use of force will have to be used to capture these motherfuckers"?
Is that your considered judgment after spending "a couple of weeks trying to write about" the 9/11 attack and appropriate response? I could have found the same opinion expressed effortlessly by any barstool-dweller in the country the day after the attack. The action outlined is primitive because "considerable use of force" in a military connection guarantees civilian casualties, and it's irrational because those civilian casualties will further inflame anti-American sentiment, which is the basic problem we're trying to solve.
I don't usually look to the Wehrmacht for advice on how to win hearts and minds, but I think Erwin Rommel was pretty desert-foxy in the following anecdote from _The Battle for Stalingrad_ by Edwin P. Hoyt:
"[In North Africa] Rommel had trouble with his Italian allies, whose officers and men too often interfered with the Arab women. The Arabs killed these Italian soldiers, and the Italians though the way to solve the problem was to take reprisals. Said Rommel:
"'There are always people who will invariably demand reprisals in this sort of situation -- for reason, apart from anything else, of expediency. Such action is never expedient. The right thing to do is to ignore the incidents unless the real culprits can be found.'"
Carl
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