Liam I am calm as you like, and certainly not attempting to snipe at anyone out in the ME preparing to do whatever job is asked of them. I also believe that my posts outline my views on the current situation, albeit slightly differently from Jacko's.
It is interesting to note that in the recent tape sent to Al-Jazeera OBL lambasts the UN for declaring 2 resolutions calling for him to be brought to international justice after the embassy bombings of '98. He aligns any Muslim country that does not condemn these resolutions as infidel, and calls on all muslims everywhere to revel in the destruction of the US and proclaims that the US and her allies have embarked not no a war against terrorism, but a war on Islam. Had the term "war" not been used (along with a number of other unfortunate terms) by the west, he may have not found it so easy to distort the truth the way he has. In the west we take for granted the power that language has. English, unlike so many other languages, lacks some of the depth and subtlety to convey varying degrees of emotion and feeling. For example the ancient Greeks had 6 different words to convey the various aspects of "love", we only have one faily inadequate description of this emotion. Extreme car must be taken in the way we portray our position, and if we are to win over hearts and minds the language used musty not be so easily distorted.
Bob, I don't think that Al-Qaeda are necessarily such a different animal. The IRA operated all over the world, quite recently in Columbia, with Libyan backing, US money, and with Czeckoslovakian hardware. They had money laundering and drug running operations all over Europe and cells operating all over the UK, Eire, and in training camps in the ME, C America and elsewhere. In 30 years we have waged a covert war using 14 Int, the SAS, regular army, Special Branch, and MI5, all of whom operated in secrecy and under a shrowd. To say that we wouldn't achieve the same ends in time may be nieve in these early days. Bombing won't flush these animals out, it will only make them dig in, and we can't bomb Afghanistan forever. Then what do we do? The clever money is on the long-term game and the only way to win in the long-term is to be covert. This is very different from appeasement, as appeasement is taking the line "if we are friendly to them they may spare us from attack". We don't need to be friendly, but we don't have to be overt and in your face either. America would do well to take a subtle approach that does not flash it's successes on CNN, or involve high-profile and largely unsuccessful bombing raids. Can we really be certain that we have managed to degrade the effectiveness of the Taleban when the Northern Alliance still have made no significant advance? Don't forget Bob that we have been in this situation for over 30 years now and the Real IRA are trying hard to score a big hit, placing a car bomb in a crowded Birmnigham street last saturday night. We are still fighting on that front even if it seems the IRA have won all the concessions they want.