"Tom Cooper" wrote:

"Chad Irby" wrote:
"Tom Cooper" wrote:

They've been killing quite a few of the head guys in Hamas, which pretty
much negates your sentence above. The funny thing about large terror
organizations is that the guys in charge don't like dying all that much,
while being very supportive of their footsoldiers dying for the cause.

The funny thing here is that they're killing Hamas leaders since three
years. Somehow, Hamas is not running out of leaders so they have to continue
killing them.

Actually, they laid off of the leaders while chasing that roadmap. It's
only in the last year or so that they've hit them again at all, and only
in the last few weeks that the Israelis got aggressive about it.
Overall, there are many less dead Israelis than in the years they were
chasing the "talk instead of fight" periods.

Given how the situation developed so far I guess they could continue killing
Hamas or other leaders for the next 50 years and the method will not
function...

Bad guess. WIth that theory, we should have seen a massive increase in
attacks by Al-Qaeda over the last year or so (not against US targets,
and less against everyone else). and we would not have seen the lulls
that happened after the deaths of previous terrorists.

Aggressively going after the training camps and organizers of groups
like Hamas *works*, as opposed to trying to negotiate with a bunch of
people who have sworn to kill all of the Jews.

See above.

I saw it. It's still wrong.

So, the only conclusion here is that they will both continue blasting
each other until the hell freezes.

Or until the Israelis take out enough of the Hamas leaders to slow down
their attacks, and scare the surrounding Arab governments a bit showing
that they can pretty much take out anyone they want. Note the recent
release of the map of Hamas targets in Syria (which Israel could hit at
pretty much any time).

OK. Then let them do that. Just, why are you interpreting my
conclusions and explanations about what "the other" side in this case
thinks about the matter as a kind of a "support" for this side?

Because it reflects that point of view of the people who are supporting
the Hamas side in this. "Stop the Israelis from attacking and watch the
bombers catch up."

I can only judge by what you say here, and you're saying things that
indicate that you think the Israelis are wrong in attacking terrorists
in countries that support and train them.

No Chad, that is your assumption, not something I said.

See your paragraph "Given how the situation..." above.

If you take a look above, I clearly stated that such attacks do not cause
fear - as explained by Robert - but only more hatred.

Except that they *do* inspire fear... among the actual targets of the
attacks. Kill or frighten the leaders and money men, and the attacks
slow or stop. This is how it has worked in the past, and there's no
reason to think it will change.

Someone bombs a bus, as part of a series of attacks. Israel kills some
Hamas leaders or blows up a bomb lab. Attacks stop for a month or more
while Hamas figures out who they can get to run things. Someone talks
the Israelis into talking instead of killing terrorist leaders.
Terrorist bombs a cafe.

What is needed is to keep up killing bad guys while talking to the
leadership, and make sure the leadership knows that they're next on the
list. The really interesting bit is going to be how the Palestinians
will start killing each other for the post-Arafat power grab...

So, I was not talking about anybody there being "right" or "wrong".
Anything of this kind is your own interpretation of the same quality
like that of Robert with which this whole thread was started.

By arguing that a strategy will not work, you are arguing that it is
wrong. That is what the word "wrong" *means*. By claiming that a
strategy that *does* work is wrong, you're taking the side of the bad
guys.

Are you really so ignorant and shortsighted too?

Nope, I'm actually comparing real past results with possible future
trends, instead of just hoping that things will magically change.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.