Treatment worse than the disease

While I understand and sympathize with the urge to do something, it is usually wise to limit one's action to cases where it is probable that said action will result in a significant improvement in the situation for an appreciable period of time. I really like how Kevin Drum, in a few words (which I have highlighted), sums up the problem with the BushCo modus operandi.

The big problem with the militarism inherent in the Bush Doctrine is that even if it does manage to kill off a bunch of terrorists and disrupt al-Qaeda's current operations — itself a debatable proposition — it's still a bad strategy because in the long run it encourages jihadist sympathies and creates far more new terrorists than the ones we kill off today. As with George Bush's domestic policy, it creates the illusion of present-day action at the expense of long-term disaster.