DEFEATING JIHAD BY TURNING THE TABLES ON THEM

Because our enemies in the current global war against jihadism are not all nation-states, and are not necessarily connected by anything more than a commitment to the hideous ideology of jihadism, and because their attacks on us and our allies are often ASYMMETRIC - costing them very little and costing us a lot - we need to adjust or strategy.

We've been using boot on the ground and expensive weaponry and efforting to retaliate.

This has gotten us nowhere. The enemy knows that they can gradually wear us down - even bankrupt us, and win a war of attrition. They see this as the reason why they've retaken most of Iraq and Afghanistan and also taken most of Syria and Libya.

To defeat this enemy we need to restore deterrence and fear.

We can do this by announcing that beginning tomorrow, whenever jihadists from any jihadist group located anywhere attack us or our allies anywhere, then we will retaliate on any jihadists anywhere.

I argue this because I think we waste too much time and energy trying to connect each attack to an exact and specific set of co-conspirators and then waste more time and resources trying to pinpoint our counter-attack against only those co-conspirators.

In the vast scheme of things, it really makes no difference if, for example, the Charlie Hedbo attacks were planned by AQAO in Yemen or ISIS in Syria or were lone wolves attacks carried out by sociopaths inspired by a variety of imams on the internet.

What matters is that we send a clear message to all the people who would perform these types of attacks or who have aided and abetted these types of attacks that attacks on us and our allies will not be tolerated, and that we will not be bullied by these attacks into submission.

What matters is that jihadists and wannabe jihadists everywhere learn that their attacks will never succeed and that they will only bring them and their co-conspirators - and their ideological and financial supporters - disproportionate suffering, death and defeat.

We teach them this simply by announcing that after any jihadist terror attack on us or our allies anywhere that we will speedily counter-attack against the most opportune jihadist target available anywhere with as much disproportionate force as possible - but one that also that yields the least possible collateral damage.

For example: an attack by ISIS in France might be countered by bombing a Boko Haram camp in Nigeria. For example: an attack by AQAP in Sinai might be countered by bombing an MILF camp in Mindanao, or a Taliban camp in Afghanistan.

And this requires no boots on the ground, just missiles and drones launched by the US Navy, Air Force and Marines.

The enemy we face is mostly united by their ideology - and not a hierarchy of command and control functionaries who are public members of nation states. All I am saying that the most effective counter-attack we could wage against these jihadists would be by counter-attacking against any the jihadists anywhere who hold that same basic ideology.

And make them ALL afraid of being whacked anytime any one of them whacks any one of us us anywhere.

Turning the tables on them.