The only problem with your response is the definition of “they.”
Kill terrorists 100:1, no problem. Even kill proclaimed supporters of these groups, no problem.
But we should keep in mind that the announced purpose of these attacks is not to defeat the West militarily. They know they cannot do this.
Their goal is to force a response from the West that will be perceived as unjust over-reaction by Muslims, who will then unite behind them in a new caliphate.
My only point is that giving them what they want may not be the best possible strategy. Right now we are fighting perhaps 10M to 50M who are hiding among about 1B+ Muslims.
The terrorists want to use us to turn all other Muslims to their side. Our goal is, or should be, to encourage or force the “moderate” Muslims to turn on and help us destroy the “immoderate” Muslims.
This is tough, but it appears to have worked fairly well, eventually, in Iraq. Given a couple of years of radical Muslim rule, and even the Iraqi Sunni resistance joined us to fight them.
It looks like we are eventually going to have to kill a bunch of people to stop this war. I know I’d much rather kill 10M radicals than 1B Muslims. But without the cooperation of the “moderate” Muslims, we can’t separate theme out.
BTW, we’ve mostly used the “carrot” approach to encourage the “moderate” Muslims. The Indians may be setting up to try the “stick” approach.
Although using a stick on a nuclear-armed opponent is tricky.
"There may be moderate muslims, but there is no moderate islam." Ibn Warriq.
Would we have tolerated 'moderate' Nazis? No.
Would we have tolerated 'moderate' Imperial Japanese? No.
We should not tolerate, nor even acknowledge that such a thing exists, 'moderate' islam.
It's a cancer. It needs to be excised from the Earth by any means necessary.
L
Pakistan is an interesting problem. A democracy - an ally of the US, sort of. THe government has idealistic people in charge, the husband of the slain Bhutto is the PM, yet there are so many radicals they can’t be sorted out. But the government is probably not behind this, not that some IN the government are not up their hips in it. Pak needs to spend some serious effort in rooting out the malefactors in their government, or they may find themselves at war with India whether they like it or not. And India has nukes too.