If such a battle is multi-generational, is it worth the effort? We won't be around to see the benefits.

Ultimately, every conflict is philosophical. The only way to defeat a philosophy is to replace that philosophy with something else. One of the primary problems is how to replace it, as many in Islam are extremely closed-minded about other ideas, the religion itself teaches closed-mindedness, and the religion itself enforces its closed-mindedness with the death penalty. It is not a rational or tolerant religion by any stretch of the imagination.

Personally, I think that there are only two ways to overturn Islam: one is to utterly wipe them off the face of the earth through military force. With 1.6 billion adherents, that's not only a tall order militarily, but will require a will throughout the grouped nations which I think does not exist right now (except ironically in Russia and China). And by the time such a will might be developed, it will be too late for many of them (see the current European Union). The second is literally divine intervention - some huge massive event that overturns everything Islam and forces them to come to grips with the false premises of that ideology. Other than that, I'm really not seeing much.

A religious based terror organization which fights guerilla style is like and octopus that can regrow its tentacles. In order to defeat it, one must destroy the head. All the fighting in different areas yield only temporary results. It would seem to me that to Concentrate on the headquarters and mop up the outposts is the best strategy. I'm far from a military expert, but I've read a few military books. Doing it as we have been doing it when we were actually doing it seemed like merely playing "footsie" with the enemy.

Religion will always remain a simmering stew of contention and corruption of the values of Objectivism. If you read their 'scriptures' as being a reasonable outline for living you always find where it allows the killing of the infidels (any who are other than themselves) or stealing from them. Their best examples (prophets) and supposedly most beloved by their god are dangerous criminals in any moral society. When those in the religion believe that the dogma is straight from god and must be lived to achieve glory in the afterlife there are plenty of 'reasons' given in the religious dogma for god authorizing murder, theft and violence against all those unbelievers. The state and religion are evil twins born at the beginning of civilization that demand the life, production and the mind of all those it comes in contact with. As the philosopher Lysander Spooner pointed out, "it is not surprising that religion exists, there are many people and many ideas that exist. What is surprising is that so many are taken with it and involve it in their lives to such a degree."

Suggest reading the book "Defeating Jihad" by Sebastian Gorka Ph.D Excellent book covering many of the same points.

Cultural battles are always difficult to combat, as the thinking that initiates the conflict has been "cooking" for generations. Conflict only makes the combatants more rigid in their thinking and motivation, especially if their culture involves "groupthink" rather than individualism.

k; I disagree. The fight with terrorism is no different than the neighbor that refuses to trim his trees that shed prodigious dead leaves onto your property, or refuses to make his children turn their stereos down after 10 on weekday evenings. The terrorism you reference in your post is only that with which we respond. If we refuse to react in such a hyperbolic manner to their ridiculous antics, they go away.

Yes...these creatures need to evolve, need to grow up. It is clear that they have not achieved any sort of self inspection.
A similar situation happened 2400 years ago when the western world no longer had the voices of others to guide them. In order to survive, to gain some sort of understanding...they were faced with no other than... themselves, to observe their own behavior and ask..."how would I like to be treated" and given mankind's underlying mutuality, that on occasion produced empathy for others, the answers were applied to others and so the process of "Conscious introspection" began.

This is a process muslims and their beloved islam has not undergone...and to that point, so too, much of the rest of the world.
The question we must ask?...how do we wake them up.

Makes me think of "collective salvation"...one cannot ascend until all are ready to ascend. In this one instance...maybe this is where the idea came from. Although, the initial premise is false but to the idea of a cooperative global society it has a valid point.
We can't have peace until all have become conscious, control their own behavior, take care of themselves and create value respecting each others property. Only then, we might be able to have unfettered movement and a global citizenship.
That's probably 1000's of years in the future if we survive these times.

this is a battle that must be fought on many fronts...physical...intellectual...and emotional...in time, we (the rational) will win...

short term is difficult...the islamic fanatics will have nuclear weapons shortly...they will not hesitate to use them on american soil for mass murder...the resolve needed to deal with them is not there with current or president-elect leaders...

stay safe my friends...

Bernard Lewis, the primary American scholar on things middle eastern believes that the problems the west faces regarding Islam can only be fixed by Islam itself. One of his books "What Went Wrong" provides back round for his thinking and conclusion.

Which is why we basically need to destroy Islam

The problem in defeating Islamic terrorism is that most of that part of the world is a pre-modern society. How are going to be brought into the the 21st century? Changing their philosophy is not the answer. Your dealing with a religious belief system that has been taught in that part of the world and that has been in aggressive conflict with others for 500 years. So, tell me that changing their philosophy will do the trick over time? I think not!
Just in Christianity has it's own internal conflicts & external disagreements , but in today's world it hasn't lead to bloodshed. I wish the the Gnostic Christians would have won the day way back when, the world might be a better place. On top of that I see Yeshua ben David (Jesus) not as a divine being but as a teacher of a way of life. Which the his followers(except for a few) misunderstood him. Then later on the orthodox leaders who won out against the Gnostics,then elevated Yeshua to godhood to control the the uneducated masses.
Maybe some day the Gnostic's will come to the fore-front of Christianity and set it on a new path.

I did not read much of the article because he refers to muslims as human.
There is only one way to defeat the terrorists and that is by eliminating them. They have been a thorn in the side of humanity for several thousand years and it is time that the rest of the world woke up to that fact. The life that each of you lives today is far different than it was prior to not necessarily 9/11 but since Carter let the embassy in Iran get taken over. The governments of what is referred too as the free world have no intention of doing anything about the situation. The reason is simple "it's the money from oil"! These sort of humans are uneducated scum of the earth and have no interest in joining the rest of the world of humans. You need not look further than the Saudi rulers who I suspect are paying off the so called elected leaders of what is referred too as the free world. Would any of you want to live in Saudi Arabia?