Which doesn't always involve killing. Truly great leaders will win as many battles and wars as possible without firing a shot. Witness Ronald Reagan's defeat of the Soviet Union. However, when circumstances dictate, carpet bombing has its place, too.
and by offering him an alternative future that might appear better than the past.
Sadly, the devout Muslims, much like urban youth have been taught to regard Western middle-class stability and serenity as a vile fate to be avoided... which makes such an approach far more difficult. The terrorists have designed their strategy to thwart our usual effective responses... and to their credit, they've been most successful at doing so.
We may not like to think all of that entails killing those who wish to kill us, but it does, always has, and tragically always will — until the nature of man himself changes.
And the ultimate tragedy is that this is exactly what the idealists in the Progressive Left have in mind... changing the hearts and minds of all of us (aka human nature), in an effort to achieve their Utopian fantasies. Of course, every time it's been tried in reality (and even in science fiction!), the results are typically horrific. How they can willfully ignore this fact is the most puzzling and unconscionable thing of all.
That's right out of Sun-Tzu...