'Five, six, seven, Open up the Pearly Gates...'

Peace can only be won when we've blown 'em all to Kingdom Come

U.S. forces in the Middle East are starting to figure out one of the most glaringly obvious realities of warfare, one somehow continually lost on postwar American foreign policy makers: attacking your enemy only intensifies their determination to retaliate.

So the Pentagon and the White House are perplexed by why, after hitting them with air strikes in h…