Know Your Enemy (and then pray for them)

It occurs to me that we have a chance for a big do-over.  That is, if we have learned anything from the past decade of warring against terrorists, we have a chance to realize that our first and most likely response is actually playing the game exactly the way Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda ilk want us to play it.   With the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq and with unrest in Egypt and Libya, not to mention Hamas and Israel, oh yeah and don't forget Afghanistan, we're all up in some of the most nerve-wracking sorts of conflicts you could possibly imagine.
Have you ever played that boardwalk game whack-a-mole?  Plastic, actually I think they're gopher heads despite the fact that it's called whack-a-mole, pop up out of different holes and you use this large padded mallet to whack them.  The more you whack the more points you score, but they keep moving faster and coming up randomly until you just can't get them all, and you lose.  Did you ever think that maybe our current antagonists are at least as smart as the people who can't even tell a mole from a gopher?
Look, it's pretty obvious to everyone that we're the big kid on the block at the moment.  Our terrorist buddies know this, they know that when they kick us in the shins by blowing up a train, a plane or a bunch of automobiles, or when they behead journalists and humanitarian workers, that they are going to make us really, really mad.  The same way that Hamas knows that lobbing mortars into Israel is going to provoke a response.  They do it to get a response, they know they're not going to scare us, they know they're not going to break our will, they want us to come after them.  They want the drones and the cruise missiles to blow up women and children, because that will create more people who think we're evil and it will draw us, into a conflict that we can't win because we're fighting an enemy who doesn't mind retreat, or defeat, or even the suffering of their own people.
Yes, it's evil, yes, it's a trap, and no, we haven't figured it out yet, so they're going to keep trying it.
You know the old saying, "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me?"  I'm not sure how many times past twice we are yet, but the shame is increasingly on us for using hand grenades to kill a spider in the nursery.  I am not the only person who has noticed that our enemy doesn't seem to mind our almost comical over-reactions to anything and everything terrorist.  In 2001 they flew planes into buildings, but that was a lot more work than just kidnapping some journalists and hacking off their heads, why would they go the extra mile if they can get the same result?
The result they want is for the US and the Western powers to burn themselves out economically and psychically, dare I say, spiritually, because that's what protracted fear and war does to you, it kills your soul.
Don't get me wrong, I've got a good case of the mads for those masked men who are beheading journalists and killing children and raping women and persecuting Iraqi Christians and Shia Muslims alike, they are evil, and they are acting in the delusion that they are serving God, which makes them the worst kind of evil.  But I remember the feeling that I had when Seal Team 6 finally got Osama Bin Laden, I was all like, "Yes, finally!"  And then I looked at where that whole adventure had taken us, and I felt, well, less than triumphant.
Did I feel sorry for Bin Laden?
Nope, not even a little, but I suspect that he didn't feel sorry for himself either, he got what he wanted, and what was coming to him.
Actually, I felt sorry for myself, because I had allowed myself to hate him so much, which was especially galling because that's exactly what he wanted.  The Jihadists want to expose the "hypocrisy" of the west, they want to expose "Christian" nations as bullies and oppressors.  They are fighting a different war than we are, thus it is entirely possible for them to be winning their war, even though we are capable of crushing them militarily wherever and whenever we finally get angry enough to do so.
Their plan is to cause the collapse of American and European military and economic hegemony, and then, they will be able to unite the world under an Islamic regime.  The part of the plan where they seize power is flawed, because over 90 percent of the Muslim world hates them as much if not more than we do at the moment, but the attack phase of the plan is going so well, they figure they can bend it back any time, you know, the will of Allah and all.
That doesn't mean that our plan of action in response to them is a good one.  It's pretty simple, and it's a lesson that we teach our kids all the time: to respond to a bully with violence is to sink to their level.  There is a balance in the use of force (just like in The Force, sorry couldn't resist), you have the right to stand up for yourself, but consider carefully the means by which you do so.  You might "win" the fight, but you have damaged yourself in doing so.
So what do we do?
Here's an idea: let's not be exactly the oppressors that they claim we are.  Let's rescue and protect civilians, let's be vocal and supportive of efforts to bring those who commit atrocities to justice, but let's not invade, let's not do the "shock and awe" thing again, because it didn't shock or awe anyone, it just made the resolve of those who hate us even stronger and made them even harder to find.  There's always somewhere to run and our enemy in this case has no honor, and very little pride of the sort that they are using against us.
Let's try something different, because the last time around on this merry-go-round got us absolutely nowhere.  You know what insanity is right?  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.