[VelociMorte]

Eva, there are a few recent successful examples of where this strategy works: The North Vietnamese and VC, the Khmer Rouge, and Los PEPES in Columbia. I'm sure there are others. No matter how intent we are on winning the "hearts and minds" of the civilian populace by providing them with food, clean water, air conditioning, schools, etc. , it's all for naught if the bad guys come into town, line up the men and shoot them, rape the women, burn the schools, and make the kids watch it all. Believe it or not, there are people in the world who are bad, just for the sake of being bad. No amount of goodness or principles will change them. A bullet in the head will.

Anyone can make a crude bomb out of pipe and any rapidly combustible material. Any twelve year-old could figure it out. It's a little more difficult to make a reliable initiating device in your garage, and the mortality rate is high for the uneducated. It's a totally different ballgame when you get into multi-kilo, command detonated, shaped-charge explosive devices. It takes an engineer, a supplier, and someone willing to transport, plant, and initiate the device. While the former might kill or wound a handful at close range, the latter has the capability to kill hundreds. With the exception of few countries, it's not that easy for a civilian to obtain high-order explosives, initiating devices, and someone willing and able to construct a destructive device. It takes criminal contacts willing to be party to mass murder. Eliminate these people and you make it very difficult for terrorists to blow stuff up. Profit and ideology drive them. A bullet in the head stops them.

Terrorist cells all have certain needs, regardless of their ideology. Foremost among these is funding. Whether funded through criminal acts, or by religious charity....guns, explosives, housing, food, travel, training and education, forged documents...none of these are free. Eliminate the funds and the terrorists are stuck in their Third-World mud huts armed with sticks. Simple concept: Fund terrorists, get a bullet in the head.

Organization: Believe it or not, no matter how charitable, kind, and helpful we are, some people will always hate us. In some countries, a male's entire education consists of memorizing the Koran and why infidels like you and me deserve to die. The really dedicated ones might then progress to a camp where they learn how to kill infidels more effectively. Throughout this "education" there are individuals teaching their own personally perverted version of Islam to impressionable young men with little in life to look forward to thanks to the wonderful education they have received. They've been literally brainwashed into thinking that since this life sucks, they might as well just get it over with, do the will of "Allah" and kill some infidels, and advance to paradise and those 72 willing virgins. To us it sounds crazy, but to a guy who has been raised in the seventh-century, it's a glorious future. The Madrasses are where this starts. Someone funds and organizes these schools. Someone funds and organizes the training camps. Someone takes these fully formed terrorists, gives them a mission, and sends them forth from the nest. A bullet in the head for each of them.

Eva, you cannot reason with someone who finds it acceptable, and even desirable to kill as many innocent people as possible. You cannot reason with someone who finds you a loathsome infidel worthy of nothing but death. As unfortunate as it is, violence is all that some people understand. That is who and what we are dealing with. The majority of the "insurgents" in Iraq and Afghanistan are foreign fighters that have traveled to these countries for the sole purpose of killing American Soldiers and anyone who "collaborates" with them. They are not fighting for their country, their lifes, their loved-ones, their freedom, or any other motivational factor we would consider normal. They fight only to kill. The only way to stop them is to kill them first.