In 2006, US killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, with an airstrike. US officials hailed the strike as a decisive blow against al Qaeda in Iraq. Eight years later, Zarqawi's group had morphed into ISIS and had taken over an area the size of Portugal, with 8 million civilians.

Playing whack a mole with the top leadership was Mexico’s strategy for dealing with the cartels for years and it literally just fractured them into more warring factions that than are each other and reconstituted into a new cartel with way more combat experience. This has happened over and over.

In 2004, Israel assassinated Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin with a missile strike outside a Gaza mosque, also killing 9 bystanders who were leaving prayers. Israeli officials hailed this airstrike as a decisive blow against Hamas.

Both Israel and the US are great at producing more radical versions of their latest enemies