If only we’d killed more children
So a new NIE says Iraq is inflaming terrorism. Seems pretty obvious to those who have been saying so for the past couple years.
Sadly, it doesn’t tell us what to do in Iraq. Keep fueling the fire or leave a safe haven? I still don’t know.
Apparently though, all we need to do is care a little bit less about collateral damage and have a bit more political will. How exactly does that work? We’re fighting a relatively small number people who hide among supporters throughout a very large geographical area. Some of them hide among us. Scorched earth tactics aren’t particulary useful. Take out a couple of mosques terrorists may have hidden in and we might kill a few more of them, but we kill plenty of innocent people and piss off a lot more. There really are diminishing returns here. Pretty soon, we’re killing more people than the terrorists have (oops, already there). Sure, we have better motives, but it still should cause a bit of reflection. That’s reflection, not “we will win through our steely resolve and our ability to destroying buildings with the flick of a wrist!”
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