Originally Posted by ratbastid

Well, there you have it.

It's blatantly obvious that anything SHORT of total annihilation will only breed more terrorists. Only problem is... try it. You'll have to kill the children of every "terrorist" you find, or you'll be dealing with them in 10 years. Oh, and their wives too. And then the sympathetic people in the neighboring countries. Wouldn't want them stepping up to avenge their fallen neighbors, right? By then Baghdad (or whatever hypothetical geography you locate the question in) is a ghost town, and you've offed so many innocent people that the Khmer Rouge looks like the cast at Disneyland. How long could you keep that secret from the people at home who elected you on your "keep the homeland safe" platform? How long could you convince them that every single one of those people really did want to kill you, and that all that blood on your hands really did prevent attacks at home?

Basically, unless you're basically willing to commit genocide and then brutally suppress any backlash on the home front, violence is not a productive long-term response to terrorism. In short, "total annihilation" may be a nice flip answer, but it's not a real-world solution.