Terror Scorecard

This comment was originally posted on dkos under Tuesday’s entry titled “Decapitation.” It was authored by “theboz.”

Too many people mistakenly think that al Qaeda is trying to scare us or get us to back down.  They know that won’t happen, and so they try to provoke us.  They are trying to force us and the arab world into a large scale war on their own turf, and once their preexisting corrupt governments are gone, they plan to replace them with al Qaeda style governments.  As brutal as some of the nations in the middle east are today, that would be much worse.

So every time we get mad at them and talk about ramping up the fight, we are playing into their hands.  Every time we openly talk tough against them, we are helping them.  On the other hand, if we were to start sending in small teams to pick off terrorists while they sleep, or get moles within the groups to lie to the members and start infighting, we would be able to win against them.  al Qaeda is not a nation, it’s an idealism.  We can’t defeat ideas with bombs.  We have to defeat it by being smarter.