Surgical strikes using ground troops are, as you point out, even more difficult.

I don't think "sit here and take it" is going to work very well as an anti-terror policy.

From a standpoint of pure logic, a given number of U.S. terrorist casualties might be a small price to pay for a society with open borders, lack of surveillance, and the moral superiority that our modern culture assigns helpless victims, as opposed to those who defend themselves. Hell, France and others never loved us more than when New York was burning.

In real life, any American leader who took this stance after even a minor terrorist attack--never mind the ghastly mass murders our enemies are attempting to prepare--would have a very short career. I also have a hard time connecting this kind of reasoning to the idea that any casualties of our military volunteers are intolerable, and must be stopped as soon as possible.

I don't even think you'd get a lot of agreement on this "acceptable risk" concept from most anti-war types, but you at least deserve credit for coming up with ideas where most of them have none.

I'm a bit amused at the idea of changing the behavior of people like bin Laden, or those who would fly aircraft full of weeping women and children into towers full of office workers, by "setting a good example."

I would appreciate a single historical example of this idea working on the predators of this world. It may work on your children. Try it on a mountain lion.

I already have many examples of how the Islamists have written about Western pacifism and world views. It is not with admiration.

There are also many examples of military action not only changing human behaviors, but altering entire cultures. More history, please.