[EQAndyBuzz]

What do you mean?

[Name Withheld]

Terrorism is a weapon by those who can't fight on the battlefield. If you can't utterly decimate (as in genocide) the problem population, any heavy-handed strikes simply make your problem worse (see, for example, the way the Afghanis did in the Russians and the Algerians forced out the French).

You can't cow a population into submission unless you're willing to do it the way Mao Tse Tung and Stalin did (and even then it's not a long-term control mechanism). You have to use fraud or they have to be genuinely willing to obey.

Thus, "killing off their leaders" is not sound policy -- it just makes them immortal heroes to their footsoldiers.