We know the "root cause." It's a religious subculture that cannot coexist with any other culture, including more moderate Muslim ones, and uses violence and murder as a primary tool. It is obvious to anyone that the limits of their violence are restricted only by their limited access to large-scale weapons. We were lucky - relatively - on 9/11 that all they could get their hands on were some unarmed airplanes.

The radical Islamic solution to the conflict is simple: conversion of the entire planet to Taliban-style radical Islam, and the obliteration of those infidels that refuse.

I have read what these people have written, and heard what they have to say. I have seen their attacks on nations allied with the U.S., neutral non-aligned nations, nations actively opposed to U.S. military actions, and even Muslim nations. We saw what they did to Muslim villages in Iraq, and even to mosques.

Too many liberals maintain the delusion that somehow we can defuse all this by eliminating "American imperialism" or something. They can't wrap their head around any hostility toward the West that somehow isn't America's fault, and believe it can be fixed by America "doing something." Ask any of them what the "root cause" is, and I know where they'll point.

Some enemies have to be destroyed. We won wars in the past against such enemies by literally obliterating them, including entire cities in their home nations. People snort about how it's taking longer to win now than it took to win WWII, forgetting completely how WWII was won. In our modern times, when every civilian casualty has become a "war crime," we have few easy, short-term choices, but targeting and destroying leaders and terrorists worked well in Iraq, and there's no reason to think it can't work now.

In fact, for enemy positions in places like Pakistan, drone attacks and special forces are the only thing available.