> None of the above excuses terrorism of any sort. It must be stopped. And I have news for you: if you kill the terrorists, they cannot continue to cause terror. It's pretty simple.
>
> Stephen

No it's not. The problem is right there: You can't kill the terrorists in some military retalliation. The way I see it, this is just like a family feud, albeit on a larger scale. If you kill 100 terrorists, there will be 200 previously undecided non-terrorists who take their places. I know that's the way I'd react if I were in their shoes.
The only way to stop terrorism by force ("to scare them") is to kill a large portion of innocent people which might have been recruited. And you don't want that, partly since there will be Americans (and Europeans, Asians, Australians, Africans, etc, etc) among those, and partly because you'll have stooped down to the terrorists level.
To put it another way, I refuse to believe that killing "The Terrorists" in some military action can be done without killing enough innocents to just make the US Army equal to a terrorist organization.

julian