yes, and thus why we are better than them.
When it comes to a group that does not have any non-violent means to achieve whatever their goal may be, how much violence they use is a product of two things, the cost of terrorism (i.e. moral reservations, amount of money and man power used and lost in evading capture, losses in support, etc.), and the amount of resources that they have (man power, perceived moral justification, money, support, etc.)
So then there are two ways to decrease terrorism from these groups, increase the cost of terrorism or take away their resources.
The reason the war on terror is so complex is because you can't just raise the cost of terrorism or take away their resources without effecting the other aspect. For example, terrorism is the product of some sort of grievance, and thus logically if we removed that grievance than terrorism would go away, but taking that grievance would also increase the utility in terrorism, and thus de facto decrease the cost in terrorism, and thus it's a question of whether or not the cut is resources from removing that grievance would outweigh the cut in cost of violence.
And, more importantly as a critique of your comments, it goes the other way too. If we were to have done what you suggested to Zarqawi, it would increase the cost of violence, no doubt. It would also generate more grievances with the US, and thus increase their resources, and thus whether or not your plan would be effective would be dependant on the increase in the cost of terrorism outweighing the increase in resources that the terrorists will have due to said actions.
And that doesn't even take into consideration other factors, such as us trying to be a moral nation, the value of human rights, etc.
