And how many more will be forced to suffer, unable to defend themselves, because you'd rather be a reactionary waiting for the exact perfect moment to act? How many children raped, mutilated, brainwashed and ruined bad enough for generations later to feel it does it take before its okay to actively remove them before they hurt someone?

This is the logic that our side has had that has kept it sitting there taking the violence for decades, letting things get this bad, and still purity spiraling about "well we wouldn't want to do anything too bad, that might make us like them."

You can't decide its a knife fight when the opponent is already shooting, you just end up dead and your "in this perfect scenario I constructed in my head, this leads to victory" idea worthless.