Holy shit dude. That's Trump level shit right there. Super surprising coming from you.
I lost a friend on 9/11 and saw the effects first hand less than two weeks afterwards, including the smell of burnt flesh lingering in the air. I also explored the site a bit after (illegally) going inside the perimeter but didn't get too far inside for fear of falling into a hole. This was worse than what could be seen by most people by about a factor of 100. It was a killing field for lack of any better description. This attack was a stab right in the proverbial heart of NYC, and by extension the country, given the importance of NYC economically and culturally.
Given all that, I felt a proper response was to end future threats like this for all time. It would be nice if diplomacy could work but based on past results in that area of the world the chances of this were close to nil. Consider this scenario. Let's say you and your neighbors have a nice peaceful town, you mind your own business, don't interfere with anything outside your town. However, to protect your own self interests perhaps you have a cache of guns, grenades, and so forth. And as a back up you have a few missiles (not necessarily nuclear). Now hypothetically let's say you have a compound of fundamentalist Christian wack jobs. They've attacked you before, but you've managed to repel them. They really had no rational reason to attack you except that for some reason it bothers them that you're not following their religion. And they're determined to mount bigger and bigger attacks until you either convert or they wipe you out. Up until now they haven't been a major threat but they're increasing in numbers and getting better weapons. One day they may well mount a successful attack which will be devastating, perhaps even one which you'll be unable to recover from. So what do you do? Three options here as I see it. You can do nothing but continue to repulse their attacks with the prospect of eventually losing. Option two, you can attack them first on their home base with your guns and grenades but chances are good for every one you kill ten will be ready and willing to replace them. Or option three is to launch your missiles on the compound and wipe out this threat for all time. Now option three of course carries the downside that you'll kill all those on the other side who don't necessarily agree with the radicals. And you'll also kill children. It's a hard moral choice, but in the end options 1 and 2 don't guarantee your survival while option three does.
Now let's look at the Muslim world. I'll grant they're not all radicals. I imagine some are good people, to paraphrase Trump. However, if you do what we've been doing, which is to go after the problem piecemeal, you'll probably create 5 or 10 new radicals for every one you kill. You might have people who are neutral or even supportive of the US, at least until they see the US take out some of their neighbors. That's true even if these neighbors were terrorists. ISIS or Al Queda will sugar coat them, make it seem like they were just innocents, and a fair number of the population will believe them. The bottom line is we've tried the equivalent of options 1 and 2 for the last 15 years. It doesn't seem to be working all that well. It really can't. You're not dealing with reasonable people here. I'll even grant some of their radicalism is justified given US interference in the Middle East but that's not the sole reason they attack us. In their mind we're infidels because we don't follow their religion. You can't reason with something like that. You just have to wipe it out, as difficult as it may be for civilized people to accept. This is quite a different threat than Japan and Germany in WWII, or the USSR in the cold war. Whatever their faults, the Germans, Japanese, and Russians were more like us than not. We were able to reach a peace and now we coexist just fine. I can't see that happening in the Middle East. I'd love for one or more nations there to rise to the occasion and prove me wrong but so far I'm not seeing it. Even our supposed allies, like Israel or Saudi Arabia, are at best fair weather friends. The Saudis couldn't even keep a leash on Bin Laden. I suspect they may have not wanted to.
BTW, I think Trump is wrong on just about every other issue except how to deal with terrorism.
