Rand Simberg wrote:
On 5 Sep 2006 11:30:04 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Jordan"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such

The enemy would, quite likely, be buying its own annihilation by the
use of this tactic.

Yes. The old saying is that "rubble doesn't make trouble."

By the way, please don't mistake my argument for a desire to annihilate
large portions of foreign populations, even the populations of
Terrorist States. I'm merely pointing out that the American government
acts at the sentiment of and in the self-interest of the American
people, and here both sentiment and self-interest would dictate the use
of whatever level of force was needed to stop the attacks.

Kyle thinks that it would instead lead to the American appeasement of
the attackers. The problem with this is that sentiment would desire
revenge, and self-interest would dictate that a stronger country with
valuable resources not yield to extortion, since by doing so it would
practically guarantee many repetitions of such extortion attempts in
the future.

By and large, the rest of the world grasps this, which is why there
have been few attacks on the American homeland from the end of the
Indian Wars on. The exceptions were Pancho Villa (who nearly got
Northern Mexico annexed by America, and was saved by the bell of
American entry into the Great War) and Al Qaeda (the 1993 and 9/11/2001
attacks on the World Trade Center, which resulted in the fall of
pro-Terrorist regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq).

Deterrence may fail to deter the inept or insane, but few volunteer to
copy their examples.

- Jordan