Quote Originally Posted by LawVol View Post
Then I must ask: when do punitive operations make sense? If we determine that military action is an appropriate response to a given scenario, must we always rebuild the country?

I would think that the Israeli scenario is somewhat different than ours however. Israel's threats are only a rocket launch away since their enemies live among and beside them. We have not faced an enemy capable of sustained attacks on our country. We always take the fight to them. Does this make a difference?
Some punitive actions are responses to unwarranted aggression; their goal is to reverse the affects of that aggression. I would consider Desert Storm to have been a punitive action that did not require rebuilding of the aggressor. We did not do enough damage to the aggressor's infrastructure to warrant rebuilding. Additionally any cost that Iraq incurred to rebuild damage to itself as a result of its invasion of and subsequent ouster from Kuwait should be considered punishment for the aggression.

In World War II, our two primary opponents were capable of conducting sustained attacks against. The Japanese successfully invaded two American islands (Kiska and Attu), were defeated in their effort to occupy Midway, and inflicted a real hurt on our capabilities across the Hawaiian Islands. German submarines operated within our coastal waters and the Germans developed aircraft ostensibly capable of completing a trans-Atlantic bombing run (Me 264,
Ju 390). During the Cold War,and even today, America was only a rocket launch away from a potential enemy.