An amazing discussion. These deep and convoluted mental machinations seem more like real life complexity than the wishful thinking in my original and hopeful post---that a simple pre-emptive and precisely surgical military interjection might've and/or could've eliminated a dark historical episode from the pages of history. But I do suspect that feeling and hoping that a big military gesture (if not posture) might do just that, is often a motivation for the first moves of those kinds in a given direction---a direction that usually has numerous unthought out repercussions. But maybe...

Would that we could simply toss our rings of power into a crack of doom-----and un-make it. I would readily give the finger to/for the cause if I thought that would take care of the smoky horizon that seems to cloud our visions of future happenings. Here near the latter years of my life, I would like to be more optimistic than I can be right now.

Art Thieme