[exodust]

The long-term strategy is peace & stability.

Before you ask "how's that going", remember that doing nothing wouldn't result in a satisfactory answer to that question either.

The idea that "killing the enemies turns the rest of the world into enemies" is absurd. Other countries wouldn't follow the Iranian regime into martyrdom. What would be the reason: "we don't like war"?

Nobody likes war, but also nobody likes evil dictators emerging on this planet and repressing 90 million of its inhabitants, and waging industrial scale terrorism offensives beyond its borders.

[muzani]

In history class, we asked the teacher why the British killed these rebels and exiled those rebels. The rebels who led an army and killed many were exiled while the rebel who only had one kill was hung in the middle of his village and left to rot as an example.

She sat they killed some of those rebels, it would have sparked more rebellions. The difference was political power, even in defeat. Mercy is a big part of survival.

It's a bit like law enforcement. If there's no police, criminals are everywhere. If there's too many police, corruption becomes the standard, along with police brutality and profiling. You can never get it down to zero, just low enough.