Terrorism in general will be best defeated by military means (war).

First of all, thank you for excepting this debate. Rest assured that you will not be condemned for "missing" a potential strategy or option for combating terrorism. The one's you did provide were all the options that I could think of, with one exception. I will get to that exception later on in the round. 1. Education Part 1 - Our Education Contrary to popular belief, I would like to argue that it is not the education of the terrorists, or potential terrorists, that needs improved, but of those trying to thwart their plots. "We in this country... don't understand the Muslim fundamentalists today.... In any event, the fact is that at the senior levels of Government we did not have a deep understanding of the people we were involved with [during the Vietnam war]; we didn't know their history, their culture, their politics, their personalities." That was a quote from former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and I think is dead on with regard to our present conflict. The reality is that we don't understand the people that we are dealing with, nor their reasons for hating the U.S. The "they hate us for our freedom's" line is an utter fabrication. Part 2 - Education of a Terrorist Most people view terrorists as poor, radical, and uneducated, but the opposite is true. Both a high school degree, and at least some college education are positive indicators for terrorist involvement. A study by Claude Berrebi compared those involved with Hamas and PIJ with the Palestinian population where a majority of them come from. First, 31 percent of the Palestinians, compared to only 16 percent of the terrorists, were characterized as poor. Second, out of 208 observations in which information about the terrorist's education was available, 96 percent have at least a high school education (that's higher than the percentage of US citizens with a high school degree) and 65 percent have some kind of higher education, compared to 51 percent and 15 percent, respectively, in the Palestinian population of same age, sex and religion. [Source is "Evidence about the link between education, poverty, and terrorism among Palestinians"] These people don't need more education. 2. Economic Aid I don't believe that economic aid is the right answer either. They don't need social welfare, nor opportunity (Many are well educated as stated before) but a chance to express themselves. 3. Negotiation I believe we may actually have something here. Now while you can't sit down with someone from a terrorist cell and attempt to talk them out of their position, you can negotiate resolutions with governments. Take for example the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that has be going on since 1948, and even before. If a workable solution could be negotiated then I believe that both sides would enjoy increased security. More on this later. 4. Due process I believe that due process should be given to any person(s) detained by the United States. It is part of the moral fabric of this country, and if we have lost that then we have lost a part of what made the US great. We have lost our good standing in the world, and by denying people their rights we only assist in our own demise. Though due process is important for those who are captured, it is not a means of defeating terrorism. Now up until this point we have agreed (education, poverty), and disagreed (negotiations, due process) on course of action a bit. Now it's time to get into the real meat of the argument, military action, and most importantly its consequences. Military Action Let us first discuss the notion that military actions create heroes and martyrs. To that I say that you are absolutely correct, and if you would have stopped there you would have had a sound argument. Unfortunately you went on to suggest a corollary to that, which was that it also has a deterrent effect on the community at large. This I'm afraid is illogical, and non-factual. Take for instance the level of terrorism in the country of Iraq pre-war, and post-war. In October of 2003 alone Iraq suffered from more suicide attacks than it had in its entire history as a country. Since the U.S. and our ever dwindling allies have waged our war on terrorism the number of terrorist attacks has increased every year. I find it hard to believe that force can effectively be used as a deterrent to terrorists, or potential ones. Pre-emption The U.S. has succeeded in destroying the number of camps from which Al Qaeda (AQ from now on) operates, and killed many of its core leadership, but the threat that it poses to the world has increased dramatically. Between 2000-03 AQ carried out more than 100 operations killing thousands. The only thing that our military has succeeded in doing is making their network more decentralized and fluid, and thus harder to track and infiltrate. AQ has become less dependent on Bin Laden, and is now more capable then ever to go on without him. One of the main problems now is trying to infiltrate these cells since they are mainly friends and acquaintances who form the cells. A common misconception is that AQ goes out recruiting people, and offering money to those who will join there Jihad. In fact, one must actually pay AQ for the training received, and equipment used. Young Muslims are not being indoctrinated in their madrassas and mosques, but turned towards Jihad because of the perceived injustice of foreign troops in their land. With no political voice they turn to terrorism as a way to get what a more civilized nation allows for, a political voice. A June 2003 PEW research poll showed that America is not on the correct track with 7% of Saudis viewing the U.S. favorably, 20% of Pakistanis and Turks, 2% of Palestinians, and 1% of Lebanese. Many of our former European allies do not think we are on the right track either, and to combat the growing number of radical Muslims we need as many allies as we can get. Now that I have refuted your position, allow me to present my own. I think a good place to start would be examining why there is such hatred for the US globally. Many feel that the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms, and have a desire to spread Islam throughout the world. Prominent neoconservatives David Frum and Richard Perle put this view bluntly in their 2003 book An End to Evil. "The terrorists espouse an ideology of conquest, just as the Nazis and Soviets did... "A radical strain within Islam has declared war on us. This strain seeks to overthrow our civilization and remake the nations of the West into Islamic societies, imposing on the whole world its religion and its law. . . . In militant Islam, we face an aggressive ideology of world domination." If one was to examine what Osama actually said you would get a very different picture though. James Payne looked through 24 documents from 1994-2004 and found that Osama and AQ have been completely misunderstood. He found that in Osama's messages 72% was spent criticizing the US and Israel, 21% criticizing Saudi leadership (mostly for allowing US troops in the country), 5% praising martyrdom, and 1% on his personal life, western culture, and an invitation to Islam. A measly one percent of his doctrine is based on an *invitation* to Islam. Just by removing our troops from other countries we could drastically reduce the number of suicide attacks in the world. In place of our troops we can support democracy in the region, and moderate groups. It is important that governments reflect the views of their own people so they don't appear to be US proxies as the Iraqi government looks to its people. Regime change doesn't need to be done militarily as you suggested above, but instead must be done gradually and politically. A regime change done by force lacks the legitimacy that a government needs to succeed, and that is what you see in Iraq rights now. There is much more to be said, and some thoughts I need to finish from this round, but I have run out of space. To be continued