I've been applying more and more violence to the fireants in my yard, but apparently all it has managed to do is recruit other ants from my neighbors' yards.

I'm still trying to figure out why they hate me so much.

heh.

First off, I was against invading Iraq from the beginning. Being a conservative and a former Marine has actually brought me to the conclusion that sending Americans into battle should only be done in extreme cases or where the national security is blaringly, obviously at risk; for me Iraq did not even come close to reaching those levels.

That being said, I would like to address your request that those who believe more force is needed state their plan in detail (so that you can fisk it) because I am of the belief that our military losses can mostly be attributed to our lack of violence. As Colnel Kurtz said "It's our judgement that defeats us".

Victory is only ever won by controlling the ground. Effective insurgencies deny the occupiers control of the territory and effective counter-insurgencies deny the rebels the territory to operate on, there are numerous examples of this. The same for conventional war as well. One can say that we never invaded mainland Japan yet they capitulated so there goes my theory. I would posit that we did in fact control the ground though, by directly threatning to turn it into a nuclear wasteland.

So, what's my plan for dealing with the GWOT? Currently we're fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and our close ally is fighting in Lebanon so I'll focus on those areas. Afghanistan is going well, I believe, and is now under NATO control so I'm not sure I can have much to add there. Their plan is working.

In Iraq I don't believe the fight has much to do with the GWOT. If you were to take away the sectarian violence it would more than likely be a much quieter place. So how do you deal with the sectarian violence? The same way Grant did, burn their cities and kill their people until they beg for mercy. It's rather hilarious to watch them dance the way they do. Everyone knows who the enemies are yet they are so reluctant to engage them. Is Iran sending in fighters and stirring up trouble? Ok, carpet bomb their border towns. Don't give up yet? Do the same thing to the rest of their cities, like we did to Germany. Make them beg for mercy. Same thing with Syria and the Sadr militia.

What should be done in Lebanon? Well, Isreal should flatten the southern portions of it as well as the Bekaa valley. They should invade and eliminate their enemies house by house. If it takes 4 years and much loss of life on both sides, then so be it, but utterly destroy them.

Of course I know what exactly that means to enage our enemies that way. It means a total commitment of our nation's resources to the effort. It means casualties on a grand scale. It means the outrage of the world against us. It means so much hatred towards us.

Funny how none of that mattered 60 years ago. How much time do you think FDR spent wondering whether or not the German people would hate us for fire-bombing their cities? Hell, much of the South in this country still hate Yankees, so what, they lost without ambiguity. This concept of not wanting to anger the locals is an invention of the late 20th century. Our willingness to win has slowly declined in direct proportion to our desire to be liked. We half-ass our efforts and get half-assed results. We're not fighting a war on terror, we're performing 'police actions' with as few as troops as possible doing as little harm as possible. It's war redfined.

So there it is in a nut-shell. This is why I am so reluctant to commit Americans to battle, because when we do, it should be balls-to-the-wall, all out warfare.

Negotiation is better than limited, tightly targeted force. Limited, tightly targeted force is better than unlimited conventional force. Unlimited conventional force is better than nuking Mecca and Medina. Nuking Mecca and Medina is better than nuking the entire Arab and Persian world.

The real question is which level will accomplish the objective, not which level is better. Negotiation is out and limited force is the current strategy. While I'm not sure it will work, I'll give it some more time. If it doesn't work, however, I see no alternative to unlimited force of the type mr_flood suggests.

There are three groups in the Arab/Persian world: active members of the various death cults, supporters of them, and those who want no part in their lunacy. Currently the latter group is more afraid of the death cultists than of anyone else, and if they are allowed to sit on the sidelines, the two former groups will never be eliminated. Limited force permits this; unlimited force would demand they choose sides. On which side of the fence they would fall, I don't know, but I hope it would be on the side of civilization. In any event, the lines would become clearly drawn.

The argument that certain levels of force would anger other nations simply precludes the use of force at all. To be concerned with others opinion of us when considering something as serious as war, trivializes the deaths of those who will die. No matter which side they die for.

The argument that certain levels of force would anger other nations simply precludes the use of force at all. To be concerned with others opinion of us when considering something as serious as war, trivializes the deaths of those who will die. No matter which side they die for.

You're kind of skipping the larger argument in my post, in that certain levels of force that may indeed anger won't actually work anyway ... not merely that we should fear any blowback or incitement from half-measures (though it's a consideration).

The blowback can be almost incidental to the fact that the handful of maniacs actively willing to murder thousands or millions will continue to do so despite conventional military responses or preemptions. With the necessity of assistance from state sponsors removed at a point where technological hierarchies sufficiently flatten, the "total war" option loses its political and practical ability to

a. influence the position of nation states that control extremists
b. find a political solution by actually subjugating/breaking the will of an entire people.
c. kill so many people that those who intend destruction of the West are also killed

All it takes is a few dedicated maniacs to do the work once reserved for whole societies. This problem will only get worse, and invalidates the traditional concept of the evident efficacy of a conventional "total war." It won't get the job done, in the terms that many right-wing folks are talking about. I'm not saying force itself doesn't work, I'm saying that exorbidant force - total war - becomes less and less viable every day.

A more coherent ethical debate equivalent to the one between hawks and doves will focus around a very, very intense version of the security vs. liberty argument. Folks that despise the Patriot Act as draconian intrusion are in for a rough ride, methinks.

[i]This problem will only get worse, and invalidates the traditional concept of the evident efficacy of a conventional "total war." It won't get the job done, in the terms that many right-wing folks are talking about. I'm not saying force itself doesn't work, I'm saying that exorbidant force - total war - becomes less and less viable every day.[/i]

You really have no evidence for this. The last time total war was used (WWII) it was very effective. All we have seen since then are limited engagements which have proven quite ineffective.

You really have no evidence for this.

It's a common sense projection based upon events that largely don't exist yet, and certainly can't be tested in the macro environment that you're talking about. Technological hierarchies are flattening. The destructive capability of the individual in World War II has less to do with the destructive capability of an individual in 2006, and nothing to do with the destructive capability of an individual in 2035.

So, at a point where a random bad actor living in Des Moines can kill 100,000 people with an investment of $1000, spurred by any given ideology (say, "Muslim extremism"), the solution of "total war" becomes next to irrelevant.

It becomes more of an insanely intense security/technological countermeasure issue.

PS - Total war targeting a fifth of the world's population as a solution to terrorism?

"You really have no evidence for this." Shrug.

It's a common sense, absolutely evident projection based upon events that largely don't exist yet, and certainly can't be tested in the macro environment that you're talking about.

May be common sense to you but I don't buy it. Let's take Iran for example, perhaps the largest sponsor of terrorism. If we were to do to them what we did to Germany, kill 1 out of every 5 of it's males, cripple it's entire industrial complex (denying it any source of meaningful income), make homeless 1/3 to 1/2 of it's population, flatten it's major cities, destroy it's roads and bridges and basically send it back to the stoneage are you certain their priorities would be topped by finding/funding/training Hezbollah members? Suicide bombers? Don't think so. Their first priority would be finding food and water just so they don't starve to death.

So, at a point where a random bad actor living in Des Moines can kill 100,000 people with an investment of $1000, spurred by any given ideology (say, "Muslim extremism"), the solution of "total war" becomes next to irrelevant.

That seems reasonable when looked at from a traditional, purely superpower viewpoint, but when looked at from another point of view, it loses it's luster. Take Vietnam for example, from the Communist perspective. They were faced by an enemy that could kill them by the thousands with impunity. An enemy that outnumbered them, had vastly superior resources and more and better armaments, yet they won, how? Total war on their scale. They maimed and killed and terrorized the natives and their enemies without remorse or hesitation until we lost the will to continue. We certainly didn't lose our ability to kill on a massive scale, we just lost the war.

Like I said, the only techniques proven to bring a population to it's knees is total war.

Also, thanks for the opportunity to have a reasoned debate, such opportunities are rare.

are you certain their priorities would be topped by finding/funding/training Hezbollah members? Suicide bombers? Don't think so. Their first priority would be finding food and water just so they don't starve to death.

The paradigm that you mention shows how total war - or even limited but aggressive war - can affect how nation states arm and/or support bad actors. Within that framework, sure.

What I'm suggesting is a paradigm where decentralized ideology (radical Islam) is completely independent of both the financial assistance of state players, as well as the geography itself.

We're not there yet on the destructive scale that I'm talking about, but we're getting closer. In the meantime, it's impossible for a Western democracy to acquire the political capital to enact total war without a series of cataclysmic events. So, it's just not going to happen that soon, and very possibly by the time it would - after the series of cataclysmic events - it would probably be tardy as an effective solution. Furthermore, I'd argue that it's already too tardy, as globalization has so many aspects of various societies joined at the hip, not the least of which being energy supply.

Also, thanks for the opportunity to have a reasoned debate, such opportunities are rare.

no problem.

Perhaps the answer lies in concentrating on the source both of the terrorists' power and their leverage over us, namely, oil. Protesters incoherently shout that the GWOT is a "war for oil". Maybe the problem is that it isn't. So let's make it one. Let's go in and take all the oil fields of the Middle East and put them under US - not NATO, not UN, not EU - control. Anyone who tries to stop us gets nuked or at least carpet-bombed. Let's see how many Iranians are willing to die for control of oil, how many Muslims will fight when we make it clear Mecca and Medina and Qom aren't threatened. Limited objective. Result - Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, etc. no longer have any oil. They can eat sand. We control the oil price. The EU and Japan and China and India pay the price we set. Hezbollah gets no more oil money for missiles. Gasoline, eventually, goes down. Win-win.

That increasing levels of force will not work seems to carry the premise that lesser levels of force have not worked either. If that is the case then one shouldn't have decided to go to war in the first place. My point is that once in for a penny, in for a pound.

Some use the WWII experience to argue for unlimited force as a solution. Germany and Japan were discrete geographical entities, that is not true for the current situation. That doesn't mean unlimited force wouldn't work now, but it doesn't mean it would, either. It may be instructive, however, that a fanatical Japan continued to hold out in the face of massive conventional force, yet capitulated when confronted with the escalation to nuclear weapons.

It is undeniable that "a few dedicated maniacs [could] do the work once reserved for whole societies", yet I don't see where less or no force would go further to prevent it than use of greater force. The moderates in the Middle East have, as I wrote, been allowed to remain uninvolved for decades already and all the U.S has gotten for its trouble is 9/11 and other sundry attacks. In fact one could argue that the invasion of Iraq, which I would characterize as something between limited and unlimited force, had a chastening effect on certain parts of ME such as Libya, Egypt, and, until now, Lebanon.

I'm not sure, but I think I understand what you mean when you wrote:

"With the necessity of assistance from state sponsors removed at a point where technological hierarchies sufficiently flatten, the "total war" option loses its political and practical ability to

a. influence the position of nation states that control extremists

b. find a political solution by actually subjugating/breaking the will of an entire people.

c. kill so many people that those who intend destruction of the West are also killed"

There is a reason that the death cultists need state support, for without it, they lose power within their own societies regardless to what condition those societies have devolved. They also lose funds, technology, intelligence, and the ability to travel outside of their locality. That having been said, I seriously doubt Iran or Syria would invite their own destruction for the sake of Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas.

a. I can't see how not applying force will enhance our ability to "influence the position of nation states that control extremists" any more than applying force will.

b. Subjugating/breaking the will of an entire people is a form of political solution, albeit a radical one.

c. This outcome, while possible, is the utter last resort. I hope it never even gets close to that.

As for the debate over security vs. liberty, it goes part and parcel with the diplomatic and military attributes of the problem,though I didn't think that was part of your post.

To be honest, I don't know how this mess will end up. I do know that, one way or another, it will end.

My point is that once in for a penny, in for a pound.

The Powell doctrine doesn't really apply to terrorism, in the sense of conventional military force structure applied towards destroying things and killing people. philosophically being "in for a penny, in for a pound" would focus more around approving drastic security measures rather than killing masses of people or taking land.

yet I don't see where less or no force would go further to prevent it than use of greater force.

Not really the point that I made, but relevant. If you can't apply quite enough force to totally beat your enemies and subjugate the collateral population, you create more enemies. This argument is abused by leftists, but its application remains. there is a point where either very limited war or total war are both better than the measures in between, as those measures in between simply radicalize populations that might otherwise be agnostic or constitute allies in the fight.

to the extent that less force enlists allies in the fight (such as a nascent Iraqi Democracy), it is more effective to wage limited war, and the inverse can be terribly counterproductive.

There is a reason that the death cultists need state support, for without it, they lose power within their own societies regardless to what condition those societies have devolved.

With notable exceptions (like hezbollah gaining power from Iranian funding), death cultists gain power from the half-assed repression of autocratic governments, not exclusively material support. And many terrorist ideologies can exist independent of state support. Especially if more aggressive measures give the impression that the war is the West vs. Islam, radicalizing agnostic elements of the populations.

They also lose funds, technology, intelligence, and the ability to travel outside of their locality.

And in that specifically, I disagree. Especially "travel outside of their locality." Easy peezy. And my point about technology is that the barriers are rapidly lowering below a threshold that requires any material support from states.

I can't see how not applying force will enhance our ability to "influence the position of nation states that control extremists" any more than applying force will.

Ah, but that's not what I argued. I argued that applying massive force won't help, when bad actors are independent of state influence. And applying massive force can surely hurt, if not applied correctly. I'm just fine with "force."

Subjugating/breaking the will of an entire people is a form of political solution, albeit a radical one.

Not when the relevant people have dispersed sufficiently and live in Bangor, Maine or Brussels, as is the demo trend. And the task of subjugating a billion people is so herculean as to be essentially impossible, not to mention carrying the potential to mortally harm things like our own economy. the circumstances are just inherently challenging. Wars and the application of our most destructive energies are wildly indiscreet events. socities and cultures are wildly indiscreet entities. Shrug.

i still believe the main problem that we face is what history points to many times. Our downfall may not be that the Terrorists bring us into submission, but that we throw in the towl due to internal pressures. Kind of like trying to do a rubix cube, with someone over your shoulder yelling at how your doing it wrong.

One problem we face is the World has to decide what the specific solution is. "Stopping Terrorism" soluton is like pounding a square peg into a round hole. The only way it will work is if you break your peg by pounding the shit out of it. By definition, terrorism is really easy.

We need short term goals which lead to long term goals, which have to adjust to the changing times.

We need to decide who's with us, who's along for the ride, and who is against us. The country bickering that is going on, only sounds like a family reunion from hell, all working on that one rubix cube.

"I'm saying that after a certain tipping point in history, total war probably won't be effective in stopping religious maniacs with custom viruses synthesized in a London basement."

This may prove to be the case. If so, the non-Islamic world too has plenty of basements of its own. If governments of representative democracies fail to act now, or act only half-heartedly, and if the neo-con project of democratization fails - and it may fail - then there is an unspoken corollary to your argument: Asymmetric WMD-armed Jacksonian vigilantism.

"since it would appear that mere appeals to human decency aren't going to carry much weight with this crowd,"

So is Drum here talking about Islamic extremists or just Republicans?

heh.

Jason,

I hope you actually know the answer to your question, and you are just trying to be clever, or popular, or whatever. God help you, and I guess us too, if it is otherwise.

Good post, Bill. I agree with you for the most part. I do disagree with your explicit disagreement with Drum's last sentence in the excerpt. He's talking about counterinsurgency warfare in that graph and history (and the US military) tend to agree with him. In the past we've been successful in that type of conflict, but the lesson we've learned is that more force generally isn't the answer.

He's talking about counterinsurgency warfare in that graph and history (and the US military) tend to agree with him. In the past we've been successful in that type of conflict, but the lesson we've learned is that more force generally isn't the answer.

As I stated, "history" does NOT agree with him. "United States history" does. "History of small wars" in the modern era does. But plenty of insurgencies outside of the modern era have been snuffed with sufficient force, not to mention a good number in the modern era; you just have to use enough force.

It helps to focus on what I'm debating: "total war." This concept casually espoused by certain pundits borders on implicit support for something approaching genocide - carpet bombing cities, using nukes. Total subjugation.

Drum starts out countering that ridiculous proposition of absolute force, but his statement at the end narrows it down to rationally debating modern experience with counterinsurgencies.

So maybe I misread him a bit, maybe he's not entirely clear. I'm certainly not being entirely clear. But we have to be clear about what type of force we're talking about, debating it in a vacuum. Saddam Hussein was very, very good at putting down counterinsurgencies. In my post, I specify (and was unclear):

side from specific prisms like Vietnam and the Soviet invasion of Afganistan, more force usually works; a nation simply has to achieve a high enough level of absolute violence. Where I come into agreement with Drum is the idea that more violence is not necessarily better, and that certain historical trends don't apply to present and future conflicts, especially ones involving Democracies that can't easily acquire the political capital to enact such terrible force.

So essentially - right wing calls to go buck wild are unrealistic because Westerners can't wage the type of counterinsurgency that works with more force, enough to be sufficient. Morally and politically, we wouldn't accept it. Which is why the calls for more force are silly. Because until they reach that impossible threshold of violence, which requires an impossible amount of political capital, they won't work. On that Drum and I agree.

Another good link good link about modern counterinsurgencies. (pdf)

So essentially - right wing calls to go buck wild are unrealistic because Westerners can't wage the type of counterinsurgency that works with more force, enough to be sufficient. Morally and politically, we wouldn't accept it. Which is why the calls for more force are silly. Because until they reach that impossible threshold of violence, which requires an impossible amount of political capital, they won't work. On that Drum and I agree.

Which is essentially the antithesis of my argument. We, as a society, are unwilling to use the force necessary to draw things to definative conclusions. Instead we argue endlessly, make elaborate plans, elevate diplomacy to biblical levels and worship ceasfires as the end-all and be-all. The result: hostilities that never end. Terrorists who never go away. We avoid all-out war like the plague and end up with the 100 years war.

"...which is the way he wants, it. Well, he gets it."

One further adendum.

Which is why the calls for more force are silly. Because until they reach that impossible threshold of violence, which requires an impossible amount of political capital, they won't work.

Isn't this precisely the feelings of our nation after WWI? We were completely drained from that war with absolutely no desire to confront anyone, anywhere for any reason.

Until Pearl Harbor.

"Morally and politically, we wouldn't accept it." [enough force to be sufficient]

One can't disagree with that point. It's not that more force doesn't work, it's that we won't allow its use.

Aw hell, I guess I should give up when I can't tell serious commentary from satire.

Robb said:
"I've been applying more and more violence to the fireants in my yard, but apparently all it has managed to do is recruit other ants from my neighbors' yards.
I'm still trying to figure out why they hate me so much."

With all respect, your analogy is flawed, if you are using it to support the position that we are hated by Islam because we attack Islam:

1. Fire ants pose no real danger to you, merely an inconvenience. Perhaps extend your analogy by adding in that your infant child is staked out on their anthill.

2. Fire ants cannot hate you - they merely react instinctively, so they will seek to eat your child no matter what, and there is nothing you can say to them or offer them that will change that behavior short of killing them all.

Likewise, Jihadis in a sense do not really hate us either, they simply do what they are trained from childhood to do: to either convert, kill, or enslave all non-muslims, which happens to include most of us in the West.

So what would you do if the "fire ants" were actually strong men with deadly weapons, but also with a fire ant's implacable urge to do what it must do at any cost, which essentially prevents them from engaging in "normal" treaties and compromises as we do, and encourages them to not value their lives or those of innocents around them?

I think this is a much more accurate, if more complex, analogy.

Luckily, Mark Steyn isn't giving up.

Islamic terrorism -- or rather, the inclination to take part in such -- is too deeply ingrained to ever be completely eliminated by conventional means but not prevalent enough to justify total war. It's a big enough problem that we can't just "let them eat sand," but not big enough that Americans are willing to embrace the sort of totalitarian rule that it would take to eliminate (or nearly eliminate) the threat of domestic strikes. So what can we do other than try to contain it as best we can, doing our best to kill more terrorists we create and striving to hold on to our essential freedoms? It's not sexy, but it has a decent cost/benefit ratio.

Eventually, science and technology will advance to the point where prevention of terrorism is impossible in a free society. And when we start moving towards a Big Brother solution there will be born a new breed of insurgents, perhaps descended from the ones who gave Bean Town its nickname.

As of right now, my solution to the problem is a diet high in hydrogenated fats. My dying words will be "your problem now!"

Bingo.

And the addition to that is the point where the cost-benefit ratio gets really, really bad, and the utility of total war ironically becomes nil.

and the utility of total war ironically becomes nil.

Again, you state speculation as if it were fact when all historical evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion. Absolute ruthlessness defeats your enemies every time, it's the rule that every dictator keeps power by. There's a strawman that has been created in modern society that states in order for total war to be successful you have to kill all your enemies. You don't, never have, history proves it over and over again. All you have to prove is that you are willing to be exponentially more ruthless than your enemies in order to de-fang them.

I would posit that modern terrorism is actually a product of the West's unwillingness to be ruthless. As soon as the terrorists figured out that their acts would be met with 'proportional' responses they had free reign for doing whatever they wanted because they know they're willing to take way more than we're willing to give. Reverse that equation and I think you'll have a more peaceful world, in the end.

All it takes is a few dedicated maniacs to do the work once reserved for whole societies. This problem will only get worse, and invalidates the traditional concept of the evident efficacy of a conventional "total war." It won't get the job done, in the terms that many right-wing folks are talking about. I'm not saying force itself doesn't work, I'm saying that exorbidant force - total war - becomes less and less viable every day.

I think you are talking about some far future scenario here. Chemical and biological weapons today are scary things – but they are not generally effective at wiping out huge chunks of our population or infrastructure. Chemical weapons require contact with the agent, and biological weapons employing existing strains are somewhat limited based on vectors and the tendency for epidemics to burn out (the more effective a bug the faster it kills – tending to wipe out those infected before they can spread it wide and far). In short a chemical/biological attack sounds a lot scarier than it actually is. Not for those effected obviously, but even simultaneous multiple attacks would kill people in the thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands or millions. They could achieve the same effect with common explosives at any of our unguarded chemical plants – any day of the week.

For the foreseeable future, killing people on the scale they would like to or seriously hurting our infrastructure would require nukes or a new genetically engineered and particularly nasty bug. Those are still the purview of nation states. (Yes, technically they could gain access to a gene sequencer and have a trained and experienced biologist working with them – but the type of bug I am talking about would take a team of highly trained researchers working together with state of the art equipment - a university or government facility.)

In short – if I accept your arguments then my conclusion is that we must escalate to total war now – before technology reaches the point where it is no longer viable. We have to make “you are with us or you are with the terrorists” mean something. Make a list and start working through it. Iran – you’re first up. Meet these criteria unconditionally or face the utter destruction of your cities and infrastructure. Then follow through and do it if needed – no holds barred. Dresden all over again. The worst parts of mr_flood’s comments. Then move on to Syria. Repeat. North Korea – same thing, working nukes or not. In fact disarming NoKo should probably be second on the list. Take them out before they have reliable delivery vehicles.

Have no doubt that America is capable of this – we just have not been pushed to it yet. If waiting means losing the option of total war, then we can no longer afford to wait for events to push us to it, can we? After all, we have seen adequate evidence that the other side will never give up under any circumstances.

Your points about future tech are well taken - but right now terrorism on a large scale exists solely due to the financial and material support of nation states. We will never be able to do anything about the damage a single whack-job can do based on the tech and materials available to him in a given time and place (even in a big brother police state). We can and do have an opportunity, actually a responsibility, to do something about the state sponsorship of terrorism on a large scale.

Thanks, Bill. That's a lot clearer and I agree with you. This all just goes to show how damn tricky issues like this are. I'd say that you, Drum, and Reynolds all agree for the most part, yet there's still plenty to go back and forth on. Really makes you realize how foolish people look tossing out simple solutions whether they're "more force" or "out of Iraq".

Israel has already won. Syria and Iran are going down.

It is all over but the shooting.

Tactics, Strategy, Grand Strategy

Bill,

I respectfully submit that you aren't thinking through the full implications of your scenario. Given that radical islamists have repeatedly, by both word and deed, demonstrated that their intentions are to kill or convert all infidels, that the radical islamists are able to effectively conceal themselves in the muslim population at large, and that the technology to carry out WMD mass-casualty attacks will eventually fit in your parents' knotty pine paneled basement and will be afordable to someone with moderate amounts of backing, such an attack becomes a certainty unless the sea that these radical islamists hide in is drained. The technology isn't going to go away and the only consession that they will accept is intolerable to us and our way of life. You are, in effect, saying that the only way to prevent such an attack is by committing genocide in self-defense. What I and a great many of the "Faster, please" faction have been saying is that in the time allotted before that sort of technology becomes available we should attack what we see as the true root cause of radical islamism: The basket-case state of the islamic world. It may be cultural imperialism, but reforming the Middle East at bayonet-point is much preferable to the alternatives.

Given that radical islamists have repeatedly, by both word and deed, demonstrated that their intentions are to kill or convert all infidels, that the radical islamists are able to effectively conceal themselves in the muslim population at large,

Radical islamists are able to effectively conceal themselves in London. Or Detroit.

What I and a great many of the "Faster, please" faction have been saying is that in the time allotted before that sort of technology becomes available we should attack what we see as the true root cause of radical islamism: The basket-case state of the islamic world.

This is an intermediate step between what we're doing and all out pacification of "the Muslim world," which to be clear, some people are agitating for. What you describe is more rational: using war as a lever to stop client states from driving terrorism and feeding radicals. This is the original Bush Doctrine, by the way. But

A. Not all radicals depend on state support. I'd say that there is a window of time where significant state support is required for devastating terrorist attacks, and thye window is running out.

B. While the window is open, it's impossible for the West to raise the political capital to wage such war, without suffering a series of cataclysmic attacks first.

C. The conventional capability of our military can be overstated. It's commonly understood that the US Military force structure is designed to fight two conflicts simultaneoulsy, "preferrably in concert with allies." We're currently in one that requires a great deal of effort to provide security for a country of 25 million people, rather than having available forces to, say, invade Iran.

And the fact is, we may not (probably don't?) have the ability to meet the two-wars-simultaneously strategy. See here and here (a bit old, but this stuff doesn't change quickly, especially with the Rumsfeld plan for "light, quick, deadly").

So "faster, please" is very, very difficult, conventionally , unless you dip into our advantage in unconventional weaponry.

Which has its own, erm, set of challenges.

Actually, my ditty about the ants was intended as humor, nothing more, nothing less.

Now, my chickweed problem - that could make for a good analogy.

If one takes as a given that at some time in the future bio/chem weapons can be created and used easily by individuals, the question of prevention becomes academic. Even if the Islamist factions are gone, there will always be the likes of a Tim McVeigh. We are left with discussing only response.

Mr Flood: "Ok, carpet bomb their border towns. Don't give up yet? Do the same thing to the rest of their cities, like we did to Germany. Make them beg for mercy. Same thing with Syria and the Sadr militia."

Well, aside from losing an Army in Iraq, the other problem is that OBL'd be laughing his head off. We took a bunch of people which were doing him absolutely no good, and turned them into a source of large numbers of bitter terrorists, and a lesson to the Muslim world of what American 'liberation' meands.

I don't see "total war" or "more force" clearly defined.
Running million-man armies across whole continents might not be necessary, so far as it looks now. Ditto carpet-bombing cities.

But what about on the tactical level? Read about no-fire zones and restricted-fire zones in Viet Nam. Need for authorization for artillery support.

The problem with Iraq-like fighting is whether the platoon-company fights can be finished hard, or whether some of the baddies get away to fight again. If the latter, are we "tying hands"?
Keep in mind that not all terrs like suicide. Some may be practical enough to think that being able to fight another day has more benefit to the cause than staying in position for two more minutes in case they get a shot, surely to die whether they do or not.
The less danger each engagement provides, the easier it is to get people to go into the next one.
I'd also like to know if putting the squeeze on some allies counts as "total war". Can we get Musharraf to go along with some hot pursuit in Pakistan? Is it politically possible for him to accede? If not, do we have the clout to handle whatever results from going ahead anyway?
The new "total war" may be total without needing a Patton or Montgomery. But it ought to mean not missing many opportunities to kill as many bad guys as possible. However it can be done.

In addition, since, as Mark Steyn and others have said, part of the war is whether the peoples involved in our side are convinced we are worth being fought for. Or are they decadently, superiorly too sophisticated to get too upset? Getting rid of their influence could be hugely important.

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