@Terra I'll never forget what Hunter S Thompson said the day after the attack. He called it.

@Tweetfiction @Terra@chaosfem.tw This is what happens when you slap America, it lashes out, striking at whatever looks like it might be responsible. Not really effecitve? How many effective terrorist attacks since 9/11???

@Pjcoyle That’s spurious at best. How many effective attacks were there in the 20 years before 2001?

@standev At least three: Bombing of twin towers parking garage and Murrah building bombing, and Oregon bioterror attack in 1984

@Pjcoyle Two of those were domestic and unlikely to be deterred by us invading countries. I suspect that a variance of one in the before vs after period is not sufficient data to definitively state that invading countries is an effective deterrent to international terrorism.

@standev Fair enough, the problem is too complex for 'simple' solutions. But maybe if you compared pre- post- 9/11 attacks in Europe with those in US it might provide some support for the idea. Again, almost certainly not conculsive. A better counter arguement may be the cost of the response vs the lives lost in US in the 9/11 attacks, or the number of civilian collateral casualties compared to the number of citizens cilled in US. The response was ugly from a lot of views. The unanswerable question is how many more people would have been killed in US without the excessive response?