Seems like this is the overriding strategic question of the "GWOT"/Long War: massive conventional warfare or special forces, intelligence, and a law enforcement approach to terrorism? Obviously it's not entirely either/or, but I think we do have to make a decision about what our military is going to be used for. Personally, I'm far more persuaded by Mike Vickers and the "indirect approach" than I am by Scheurer and the folks calling for World War III (or IV, per lunatic Podhoretz).

Massive U.S./coalition ground campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have been tremendously expensive, politically contentious, and are still years if not decades from achieving success. Given how much it costs us, economically and, maybe more importantly, in the state of our military, I don't see how this kind of model is sustainable.

I suppose Scheurer would argue that we need to take the gloves off and employ Roman methods of pacification, but in a post-Enlightenment, modern media age, I don't think people would go for that, absent maybe a nuked New York. And, at the risk of dragging this thread in another direction, I can't be the only Christian in America who finds "make a desert and call it peace" morally questionable.