Where was our wrath of God?

It has become more apparent to me that this country blew its true chance to put a lid on the kind of global terrorism that happens across the world - in places like Madrid, Bali, London, etc. The enemy is no longer deathly afraid of us because we have done nothing to produce that kind of paralyzing fear in anyone.
After Sept. 11, we got mad. And we swore to get even. So we took off and directed our wrath against the location (Afghanistan) when Al-Qiada was headquartered. By ALL admissions and intelligence, we had the head of the serpent (Osama Bin-Laden) trapped like a rat.
Suddenly, instead of finishing the job, we turned our military and monetary attention to the neighbor, Iraq, to appease some OTHER political agenda (regime change that was NOT successful in 1991 at the end of Desert Storm). We took our considerable boot off the terrorists' neck and looked away.
As a result, we have become bogged down in a dirty, desert war that we are NOT winning by the kind of verdict required for our extrication, we have created a site for new terrorist recruits to practice their "art" and the enemy has been given new life (as witnessed in London). Bin Laden is not captured, the serpent lives and possible thrives by gaining new converts and no one is safer (just because there have been no further attacks, it does not equate to safety).I am convinced that all the jihadists understand is blunt force trauma. Bringing the wrath of our God and their Allah on their heads and homes. Hell, if they were hiding in the mountains, we should have shown them how we destroy the mountains. They needed to see the blood in our eyes UP CLOSE and PERSONAL so the message would have been understood. Mess with us and THIS is what happens! We are slow to anger but you do NOT want to get us riled!
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was correct in his Friday column that said this was an Islamic problems to purge these people from their ranks. But we could help the case by providing the example of the wrath that COULD take place.
The analogy to what has been happening is this: If surgeons are operating on a patient for brain cancer and have almost gotten the tumor cleanly, why suddenly would they begin blood letting around the leg; which was not the life threatening problem? Now the leg is a BIG problem and the cancer hasn't been removed.
The United States could have put its foot on the throat and squashed some of these roaches for good, but decided to operate elsewhere at a time when the second arena of action was not a threat to the nation.
And now, the operation will take so much longer than it should have.