It's not when I'm limiting my use of the phase to al-Qaeda, where they indeed used that argument ... and found out that they were fantastically wrong
AQ seems to have calculated pretty well actually. What you're missing is that the US acted precisely as AQ wanted them to act. They wanted the US to go nuts and overreact which would cause them to overreach, and that's exactly what we did. We wasted trillions of dollars on a pointless war in Iraq. Our pointless war killed a million people and turned another 3-4 million into refugees. That screamed to the world that the US is an irrational self-absorbed state that kills lots of people without caring. That has repercussions for our ability to get intelligence in the future.
In the process, we also convinced the entire world that we were much weaker than they ever thought. Think about it: the world's most powerful military was completely sandbagged by the remnants of a third rate army in an impoverished state for years. All our fancy technology? Most of it worthless. US soldiers getting killed one and two at a time every day for years. Our impotence made manifest.
We gave AQ exactly what they wanted. Many people in the Islamic world used to think that AQ was a joke before 9/11; we made them into our nemesis and thus elevated them to our level. Rather than saying "these are a bunch of criminals and we'll bring them to justice, just like any other criminal gang that kills innocent people," we convinced the world that there was a global movement which AQ represented and that we were going to destroy it. And then we failed at just about everything.
As for the general proposition, at the highest level, do you think weakness encourages or discourages attack?
I think anyone asking the question needs to go read some IR theory and history. Look, organizations make decisions based on their capabilities and their own internal dynamics. Was the US strong or weak in 2000? It depends. There is no objective answer because the question is ill-posed. So anyone can justify any answer. People in AQ who wanted to act convinced themselves that the US was weak. If the facts had been otherwise, they would have twisted those facts into justifying attack as well.
What you're talking about here is signaling theory and you really should read about it. Historically, governments have been convinced that by taking various actions, they were "signaling" or "sending messages to" their opponents. But years later when historians looked through the opponents' archives they discovered that those opponents never got the message. Or that they interpreted the message in ways that suited their own internal biases. Showing resolve and demonstrating strength sound good to people but are fundamentally misguided actions.
I have read about it, WRT to the Vietnam war, where Team LBJ's precisely calculated signals and finely tuned bombing did indeed not send the message intended to North Vietnam ... but perhaps it did signal something true.
And I of course disagree with your analysis of our post 9/11 response and how it was taken, and note your complete failure to address our invasion of Afghanistan and decimation of al-Qaeda in that region. That most certainly sent a strong and unambiguous "signal":
Kill "too many" Americans and we will break things and kill people, starting with you and your country. That worked too for Nixon and North Vietnam.
The fact that we got "sandbagged" in Iraq was certainly bad ... but you can't cite it in isolation with the fact that we then stuck to it until we got it right. Capturing and hanging Sadam also sent a major signal.
You're missing the point. Opponents will reinterpret signals according to their own biases. Since signals are ambiguous, that is easy to do. Consider this example. Let's say the US leaves Iraq tomorrow. AQ will get on the media boasting about how AQ forced the US out and how their departure is a sign of AQ's power and American weakness. Now consider that the US stays in Iraq for another decade. Then AQ will start boasting about its long term strategic brilliance in forcing this idiot superpower to waste trillions of dollars getting bogged down accomplishing nothing and this thus proves AQ's power and American weakness. It doesn't matter what you signal, other actors will interpret according to their biases, not yours.
And I of course disagree with your analysis of our post 9/11 response and how it was taken, and note your complete failure to address our invasion of Afghanistan and decimation of al-Qaeda in that region. That most certainly sent a strong and unambiguous "signal"
Look, not everything boils down to signaling. Killing AQ leaders accomplishes something in and of itself; it is valuable for changing reality and not for signaling. If you wish to justify such actions, you can do so without discussing the signaling at all.
In any event, AQ is still very much in business. And our strategic position in Afghanistan is incredibly weak. We have utterly failed to vanquish the Taliban. All we've been able to do is pump up an astonishingly venal and corrupt government that most Afghans hate. For the most powerful military in the world, we've certainly failed spectacularly.
Kill "too many" Americans and we will break things and kill people, starting with you and your country. That worked too for Nixon and North Vietnam.
Afghanistan is not Osama Bin Ladin's country. Saudi Arabia is. Afghanistan does not provide the funding or the networks that AQ relies upon. So, yeah, we killed a lot of people in a country where most people had no interest in attacking the US and in so doing we failed to eliminate AQ. Brilliant.
The fact that we got "sandbagged" in Iraq was certainly bad ... but you can't cite it in isolation with the fact that we then stuck to it until we got it right.
Our war killed a million people. They're not coming back from the dead.
And we didn't get much right. Our strategy involved paying off our enemies with money, weapons, and power. If we had given the German army tanks and cash during World War II and promised to stop fighting, things might have gone better, but I wouldn't call the result victory. And the plan never would have worked if our allies hadn't finished ethnic cleaning their opponents right around the same time. In general, plans that require ethnic cleansing for success are...bad.
* Capturing and hanging Sadam also sent a major signal.*
And what would that be exactly? That the US will start wars that waste trillions of dollars, kill a million people, create 4 million refugees in countries that didn't attack the US in order to...what? I think this proves that the US behaves irrationally. Trillions of dollars matter. One million dead people matter.
Well, at least about the US being a weak horse.
As for the general proposition, at the highest level, do you think weakness encourages or discourages attack?