re: US Marine captain writes stinging op-ed: 'We lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan'

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I believe the "we could win, if we were just more brutal about it," line of thought is counterproductive. As I mentioned above, the only successful endgame of a war on terror is one in which Muslims no longer want to become terrorists. They currently want to become terrorists because they feel we threaten their way of life. Is going over there and killing more civilians going to change their minds? The more violent against them we are, the more we justify their beliefs in their own minds. Violence will never win this war.

The counterargument everyone always uses to this is, "Look at Japan! They hated us too, but we nuked them so hard they are our friends now." What people who use this argument don't seem to realize is that the Japanese were acting as members of a state, and that when the head of that state finally ordered them to lay down their arms and surrender, they did so. Our war aim was to force the Emperor to give that order. Our current enemies answer to no state, nor does Islam have any central governing authority. They are prompted to attack us not by authority, but by a gestalt. How is the military supposed to address that?

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