Well, GeneX, total victory would occur, but in fighting in the style of the Romans, victory would have to be in the style of the Romans as well. Israel would have to conquer the entire Middle East for there to be lasting peace, and 'total victory', and that's just not possible. There's just not enough manpower. Setting aside all the moral implications, plus the fact that the Middle East isn't exactly isolated in its support groups.
I'm definitely not advocating anything remotely like 'taking over' the Middle East. That's ridiculous. But I think that's what a 'total victory' would look like. Believe you me, I would like nothing more than the Middle East to modernize and adopt the more free reign-style of western cultures, and have individuals be more independent. But no one can make them do it from the outside. We've learned this from Iraq, you can't topple a standing government that had been there for hundreds of years and tell the people to 'go vote'. There's gotta be a third way. Having the internet probably would really help speed up that way. I think that more than half of China is on the internet now, and look at how they're finally booming.
Anyway, the Middle East is just stuck in the Dark Ages, and Israel is the only one in the here and now. Sure, Lebanon was okay, but they had incompetent government and weak military, so they allowed (had no choice, really) to let terrorist groups like Hezbollah to take over. Their culture was there, but the government was not. Now because of that, it's set back decades, with brand new resentment. Doubtless this is what terrorist groups want: they can't have lasting control, they're comprised of mere thousands at the most. All they want is to topple governments and influence their brand of control on people. This is kind of what we have now: Muslim terrorists, who, through their fanatical faith, want to bring about the end times. The way we fight this, along with the not-quite-as-effective conventional means, is to not let them control our way of thinking. They don't give a damn about the 'suffering of their fellow man', whoever believes that is in a right sorry state. Their most powerful tool is endless propaganda, sometimes not even based on any kind of fact. As long as people keep lapping it up, either to help the underdog, or to express their anti-Semitic feelings more easily, or to just plain invite chaos because the world is too damn boring, terrorism will continue to be.
We probably should have ignored all these terrorist things. We've fanned the flames even before Iraq, and thus played right into their hands. Through us, we've caused more destruction than 9/11 ever could live up to. But it's hard to ignore 3000 of your civilians instantly dead, caused by something that defies belief. I don't know what to say. This problem goes way beyond, and is not affected by Israel 'keeping Arabs in poverty', or America relying on oil for just about everything. This can escalate the problem, but is not the root cause. I don't know what is the root cause. Do they do it because they can, because we allow them to? After World War II, who could've predicted the Cold War, and after that, who ever could've predicted this. Interesting question, if we snuff out this threat, what's the next one? I'm gonna go with nanobots devouring spacetime.
EDIT: Sorry, this was kind of a thinking out loud experience. Feel free to ignore whatever babble I've produced.
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