Ruken:
The before-occurrence risk is low such that risk-reward calculations about preventive measures are justified. AFTER an occurrence happens, the perpetrators must be identified and stopped from causing more occurrences. A specific malicious individual or organization is not some random risk like a shark attack. If he (pronoun used for convenience) bears ill will, and has attempted and succeeded in causing harm, then it is necessary to act against him or else he will plan to cause harm again.
But he wasn’t some stereotype nomadic goat-herd. He was educated and trained in all ways the Western world considers advantageous. And even without his family’s actual financial support, he had connections from that part of his life that he was able to exploit.
A country’s military is charged with protecting its own citizens from acts of foreign aggression. It doesn’t need to limit itself to world-conquest danger levels.
There is nothing irrational about a government using its military to go after a foreign entity that has demonstrated the desire and the ability to harm its citizens.
They exploited multiple loopholes, changing attack strategies every time. The September 11 attacks were hardly the first Al Qaeda action, nor the last. The only thing “one-time” about them was that they happened on actual American soil.
Yeah, we did that. Deposing a nation’s government in order to root out a terrorist group is hardly any help if you leave a power vacuum which almost certainly leads to the worst and most violent elements taking over. It’s a messy situation, but it’s better than sending the message that America will do absolutely nothing against them when they kill American citizens.
Kimstu:
What exactly is “international policing” if not military attacks? If the Taliban were willing to either root out Al Qaeda for America or even to allow America to come in to capture them without actively hindering the effort, perhaps such attacks could have been avoided and the goal accomplished. But that was not the situation. The only way America was getting at Bin Laden and Al Qaeda high command was by forcing the Taliban out of the way.
Yes, that’s true…the strategy of modern terrorists is to hide behind civilian populations such that getting at the terrorists is impossible without civilian casualties. It’s a consequence that America tried to counteract in Afghanistan through their nation-building efforts after the fact, and it’s not entirely successful. But it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, and ultimately one or the other has to be chosen.
First of all, just because the leaders of the movement are happy to convince their followers to sacrifice their lives doesn’t mean that they themselves are down with the suicide/martyrdom idea. Secondly, those who have bought into martyrdom as an ideal want to go down accomplishing their goal, not dying just for their enemies to win. And thirdly, there could be other hostile entities whose agendas are not so ideologically driven and who may have been emboldened by an unanswered attack but cowed by one that has consequences.