open text

So the new master plan involves bombing yet another country. "Lay waste to your enemy so he may not harm you" - Genghis Khan.

Once again, the assumption is that you can defeat a fundamentalist enemy by military means. But you can't, as long as a single fundamentalist remains alive on the planet (including all those within your own walls, and all those who are not fundamentalist yet), because each strike will harden your enemy's resolve and re-confirm their view of you as the great satan, and of their own cave-dwelling robed leaders as true prophets.

And you can't win by negotiation, since you have nothing to offer that your enemy needs. All they want is to follow their spiritual path.

According to the book Jihad versus McWorld, terrorists swim in a sea of popular support. Since their appeal comes from their 'religious' conviction, your only hope is to support the other fundamentalists, the ones who reject violence, and hope that they will gradually win the argument. Only they carry the authority to ground their arguments in religious law.

The aim would be to take away the terrorists' false aura of moral superiority and dry up the stream of recruits.

Of course, a real change of strategy would require vision and statemanship. It will never be tried, or at least not until it's too late and all the non-violent fundamentalists have been driven to violence too.

---

Disclaimer - "Not fact-checked or fully thought through".