Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
Possibly, but it's not a measure we'll be able to use effectively, as we will never know what the outcome of other policy options would have been. Things may go badly or well because of or in spite of our actions: there are too many variables in the picture to clearly say what actions caused what consequences.
Regrettably (or fortunately, viewpoint dependent), there are few metrics that one can apply to strategic outcomes due to those variables so there is rarely a measurable effect. Was US participation in World War II a strategic blunder? Was the war a strategic success? How about Korea? Viet Nam? Desert Shield/Desert Storm?
Possibly so, but I can't see how that particular response was calculated to address that threat, unless our policy was to address the threat by exacerbating it. Since when do we fight our enemies by giving them what they want and need?
It was. Exacerbate that is. Give it some thought. It was also calculated to show the collection of nations from which the threat originates that attacks on US interests world wide emanating from the ME would, contrary to previous experience, bring a disproportionate response. As Afghanistan had earlier shown that attacks on US soil would be met with even swifter and possibly more disproportionate response. Afghanistan didn't work for the ME message as it isn't in the ME.

The response notably attacked a nation only peripherally if at all involved. It also was aimed at giving the nominal enemies what they though they wanted but in a quite different place and not with results they anticipated -- so I'm not at all sure they got what they needed...

Recall this also; "It was only the most visible face of the entire effort -- very deliberately and purposefully distractingly so..."