Yup, that sounds about right. Outlasting insurgencies can be a tricky business, though. Look at the English in Ireland, for example. Centuries, and in the end it was the English who gave in, not the Irish.
The English have never been good at the whole colonization thing. 
I thought Iraq was the way Bush was going to prove that the US is willing to shed blood. Still the insurgency went on. I doubt they would suddenly stop if somehow they knew the US army would never leave.
I agree with what most people commented… the West hasn’t learned… terrorism doesn’t have a military solution.
Bosnia? Arab? 
Fundie?
Yes. We looked the other way when Arab countries imported arms to help the Bosnian Muslims. They also used this help to try to radicalize the Bosnian Muslims, with little success IIRC.
I think it may be illustrative to reframe your OP in terms of this analogy:
We put our hand in the bee’s nest and we got stung and we took our hand away.
We put our hand in the bee’s nest again and the same thing happened.
A third time too.
Are we teaching the bees the wrong lesson?
I appear not to have been clear in what I was saying, so I’ll expand on that a bit.
Firstly, I remember the period and was as perplexed and angry as anyone at the outlaw nature and seemingly complete lack of concern for the norms of diplomacy displayed in the US Embassy siezure. I was not saying that no rescue should necessarily have been attempted, in fact at the time I cheered the attempt to do so and was depressed by its failure.
Assuming that the desired outcome was the successful release of the hostages, however, it seems that the much-derided tactic of sanctions had an influence in obtaining their release, just not on the sort of timetable that the notoriously impatient American public would have preferred. Of course some sort of rescue would have been mounted in any case; the successful Israeli operation in Entebbe was still fresh in everyone’s minds and the public would never have stood for it if the US had not tried to duplicate it. In the end, however, it was not military means that gained their release, it was mainly near-global economic pressure.
What I’m suggesting, once again, since the subject is lessons learned, is that it is not always essential to take military action if there are non-military avenues available to resolve the problem, and that the US might try to learn a bit of patience in dealing with these problems.
As for what I would want were I in the position of the hostages, I suppose I would hope that my government would calmly and deliberately weigh the various risks and determine the best way to go about obtaining my release, preferably with a minimum of bloodshed all around, and without making a dead political point out of me if possible.
I think they were essentially pissed about Carter sheltering the Shah–after all, it is predictable that when an embassy is seized, an ggreived state will make at least a show of projecting power. I don’t think the Iranians were so small minded as to resent a rescue attempt that gave new dimensions to the term “fiasco”. The more so as no actual iranians were discommoded in the least iirc.
RE:9/11 and osama:Might we not look at his behavior differently; not as adventurism embolded by a perception of flabbiness in US policy, but as a series of escalating pokes in the eye DESIGNED to provoke a golbal response.
Thus, act one, embassies bombed (cf the iranian model where all returned home alive…). As classic an act of war by way of proxy attack on US “soil” as you can muster from 3000 miles away.
But, no luck for 'sama. We don’t bite.
OK, he says. The embassies didn’t float your boat, how’s about I sink one? (the kohl). Now its direct attack on military interests. Normally, that’[s enough to crank up your aveage government.
still, no dramatic mobilization, just some cruise missiles.
OK, sama says. ir proxy attacks on your soil won’t crank you up, we will drop the proxy part. . “How do you like me now.”
ms quoted as saying “the americans will eat all this shit, and tip the waiter too…”, but I think that was misinformatin, or possibly meant to bolster jihadi morale. I think he has been trying to produce a “crusade” for years, and it was his goal, not his miscalcuoation, that materialized when we invaded afganistan and iraaq.
I am proposing, (with a sttraight face) that this refugee from the middle ages had a fucking global vision inforiming a deliberate strategy commensurate with the complexity of a campaign projected over decades with geopolitical goals that no individual, (no matter how rich) has any business enunciating, let alone vindicating.
Talk about your assymetry… on one hand roughly one-third of the world’s productive capacity and pretty much 90% of its guns, vs. a guy in a schmata.
nb. the guy in the schmata is eating our lunch.
Note that there have been successful defeats of guerrilla/terrorist movements by Western powers. I think that the US military and the civilians in charge of military policy need to take a good look at the way the British forces in Malaysia handled first, the Communist guerrillas and terrorists on the mainland, and second, the Indonesian-backed guerrillas on the island of Borneo.
There is a similarity to Iraq in that in both Malaysian situations the insurgents did not have the support of the majority of the population, and included foreign elements which were seen as outsiders. The British used a mix of conventional warfare (including airstrikes and bombing raids) and non-conventional warfare to completely defeat both groups. Iraq and other current situations are not the same as Malaysia, but there are some good lessons to be learned and ideas which can be modified to fit. I believe the main lesson of Malaysia was that the military needs the support of the civilian administration, but that the military cannot be in charge, as their objectives are necessarily limited to military outcomes. (IIRC the national commissioner of police was in overall command in Malaysia.)
OK… I agree that we the US and specificaly our leaders need to refrain from
sending in the troops and let non military actions (like embargos and world pressure) work!
We might look at it that way. As I said, it’s all interpretation or psychologizing of Bin Laden. As far as ‘eating out lunch goes,’ I haven’t spent the last four years in a cave. 