I feel like we need some kind of balance for the “nuke Mecca” thread. I’d like to talk about some more realistic alternatives to fighting terrorism (specifically, the terrorism against the US, but this can also be more general).
There are the obvious conventional methods - Israel’s current “decapitate the hydra” campaign, using counterinsurgency (and sometimes brute force) to knock off terrorist leaders and hope the organization dies. Pluses to this are that it leaves the enemy confused and unorganized for a time - threatened “mass retribution” has not (yet) come. Minuses are that, among other things, it just pisses off people more.
There is the “screw them” method used by the United States - finding likely enemies, invading the country, and kill and/or arrest half of their population. The plus here is that it sends a rather strong and imposing message, and you get colonies to boot. The minus is that, again, it tends to piss a lot of people off, only on a much larger scale, has not been demonstrated to be effective in any way whatsoever, and tends to get you involved in prolonged regional conflicts. It also gets you into messy regional politics.
There is the Russian approach, which is decidedly Russian. This is similar to the US approach, but it doens’t bother with the finer points. It has the same drawbacks.
There is the “turtle shell” role taken by Europe - hide, try to look innocent, and invest in a decent counterinsurgency police force (demonstrated by Germany and France). This seems to be a rather positive approach, though it lends itself to having terrorist cells operate within the countries, making them gateways to the west. It also doesn’t protect them from some fundamentalist groups whose goal is to “destroy Western civilization.” On the other hand, Germany isn’t quaking in its boots.
Then, there is capitulation. Giving in to their demands. The major negative of this is that it assumes that the terrorists are infact sane and have specific demands. Another is that it encourages more terrorism. However, if done carefully (playing the great political shell game), a retreat can ease the pressure felt at least by the greater part of the society. This also encourages friendly relationships with regional governments. This can be, needless to say, tricky. This tactic is explored frequently in Latin America, and proves to be rather hit or miss, depending largely on who you are dealing with.
Lastly, you have your long term method(s). Suck it up, take the pain, and hope that in a generation or two, your peaceful relations and cultural expansion will calm the situation down some. Work with their government to change their education structures. Generally, play nice while subtly working your culture into theirs, making them familiar with you, and hope they get over it. Obvious negative here is that this can take generations to work, and it only takes one hostile leader on either side to ruin everything and make you start over. This isn’t much of an option for democracies, since power will change hands too frequently to rely on constant good relations. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of many cases where this actually worked.
Oh, one other. Find a common ground. Find something that is so despicable or threatening or otherwise bad that you can join hands with your former enemy to combat it. An example of this would be the USSR. Amazing how quickly France and Germany kissed and made up after that whole WWII thing when they had a few million Soviet soldiers sitting on their doorstep. Not a terribly likely thing to happen with respect to Al Qaeda, however…