Waterboarding

[Thorne]

Would it be futile? I suppose it depends on your goal. If you're trying to eliminate terrorism, then you can't do so by committing terrorism. If you're trying to prevent a particular group of people from engaging in terrorism, then I disagree - I think that killing them indiscriminately is probably expedient and effective.

I disagree. Random killings as you prescribe only serve to help the terrorist organizations recruit new members. True, they wouldn't be from the particular village or town which you've eradicated, but their neighbors, friends and relatives in other villages and towns would be more likely to join their "freedom fighter" comrades than try to stop them.

Who used terrorism against the Nazis? To a very small degree, German Jews... but mostly, the Czechs, the French, and German Christians were responsible for almost all of the clandestine internal resistance faced by the Nazis. Why is that? Because Jews are inherently docile? I don't believe that for a second. Rather, I think it was because the Jews were being exterminated, a precondition that makes it difficult to fight back.

They weren't docile, but the Jews in Europe were notoriously non-violent, apparently believing that keeping a low profile would help. By the time they became aware of what was actually happening in Germany it was far too late for armed resistance. There were too few of them left.
In other countries, German attempts to put down "terrorists", or guerrilla fighters, such as the French underground, by executing civilians after any activity, was grossly ineffective. More people were driven to the underground
by these acts than were turned into informants for the Nazis.
In Czechoslovakia, after a high-ranking SS officer was assassinated, the Nazi's murdered all the men and older boys, and sent all of the women and children to the camps. True, none of those people, who'd had little or nothing to do with the actual assassination, were much of a problem any more. But the action did nothing to stop anti-Nazi activity throughout the occupied territory.

Financial restrictions probably work well against well-funded guerrillas... the Iraqi insurgency, or Hezbollah, which are both heavily equipped and funded by Iran would lose a lot of their ability to harass the American and Israeli militaries respectively if their money was taken away... but according to Todd Sandler, a University of Texas "expert in transnational terrorism", a suicide vest costs $150. I suspect that taking away expensive things like explosively-formed penetrators and radio detonators from the Insurgency would just make them go low-tech, at which point they would start targeting civilians more.

You are never likely to stop all terrorist activity in an area, regardless of what means you use. Stopping the funding is more than just restricting their ability to create bombs, though. They need that money for recruiting new members, for propaganda outlets which inform the people just how wonderful they are. If you stop the money, you stop those television broadcasts and web sites which can influence so many. Eventually the more rational education systems will change people's attitudes. And you are less likely to have mass attacks such as the 9-11 and London bus bombings, among others.

The present is actually a fantastic time to be alive (when compared with a non-nostalgic understanding of the past).

Here we are in full agreement. Advances in science, medicine and technology have made life much more comfortable, for most of us at least. True, they also allow much more dangerous threats, such as dirty bombs and nuclear disasters, but all in all the good outweighs the bad.
I have this image in my head of the first man to "tame" fire, walking into his tribes cave with a burning branch and a piece of cooked meat. Just imagine all the elders and religious leaders gathering around and deciding that the fire is just too dangerous to be used. Too many things can go wrong. We'd still be eating raw meat and grunting, I think. Anti-technology advocates today are just the same, too worried about the possible problems which can be caused to see the real problems which can be solved.