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Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto
It's sad that the world's two most powerful nations have both been targets of extremist terrorism, and that they react in a short-sighted military manner rather than a more considered, engaging, long-term strategic manner with a view to treating the cause as well as the symptom.
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How do you know that a military strike here and there will not have a long-term positive effect? Just downplaying it as "short-sighted" doesn't really cut it this time. Fact of the matter is that there are countries that are unable or unwilling to put a stop to known terrorist activities. If these countries can't stop it, someone else has to. And frankly, I don't care one bit whether the locals there will get upset - if we didn't strike, *our* locals would be killed. Perhaps the locals there will start to understand that there are consequences to their (in)actions, and they'll change.
Of course, I prefer a more balanced approach, where pre-emtive strikes are combined with long-term strategy. I won't ignore the Islamic extremists, nor their massive support in some parts of the world. In my view, if you support terrorism, you should pay the price; In the long term, I prefer a "if you *don't* support terrorism, you will get a better life" strategy.