I just stumbled across this quote by Eric Hoffer:

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Then my thoughts drifted towards ‘terrorists’ and the extent to which this quote might apply to them.

So here’s a pretty loose hypothesis, with a whole range of questions.

Let’s assume that we could clearly identify the means he uses to frighten us, beyond what we see on the surface. (I can already see lots of questions here, like, is he actually frightening us or are we doing it ourselves?). What might they be?

Now would that be what would frighten him the most?

Would we be capable (beyond politically willing) of inflicting that on him?

So this is more about dealing with the enemy rather that the ‘nation building’ aspects, as intricately connected as they probably are.

Philosophise away….


P.S. I don’t have any particular opinions here myself and don’t expect anything concrete to come out of it. This thread could just be an entertaining time waster.