That is a real fanciful story you have made up there. Can you give one example of the Dalai Lama doing any of that?
Certainly not. But then again I didn’t say he did. I said that he *should* do something like that.
His argument was that non-violence doesn’t work against the closed minded. My argument was that it can, but the approach must be different.
The truth is that tyranny is weakness, be it the tyranny of a dictator, or of an invader, or of a terrorist. The most important thing is to never submit to tyranny, because a tyrant is dependent on the cooperation of his victims. If they refuse to cooperate, in many different ways, his efforts become exhausting.
People can choose many ways to not cooperate, however. Non-violence, as was practiced by Gandhi, was one. Diplomacy and reason, as practiced by the Dalai Lama, is another. And what I suggested, playing on the superstitions and the fears of the terrorists, is yet another. And there are many more. But what they all have in common is a refusal to be tyrannized.
Even in the murderous brutality of the old Soviet Union under Stalin, there was a way for the average Russian to not-cooperate with the terror of the state. Sloth and inefficiency. The realization that they could kill anyone at any time, for any or no reason, cannot make people productive or cooperative. Instead the get drunk and slack off.
But it boils down to the same thing. Terrorists are weaklings who think they are strong because they are violent. And just because you cannot argue them into stopping their violence, doesn’t mean it is the only way to stop them from being violent. And it isn’t even the only non-violent way to stop them from being violent.