Does terrorism work?

From The Corner's excellent London coverage yesterday:

"I think there are four possible responses to terrorism:

"1. Do what they want.[...]Here, terrorism works.

"2. Do nothing.[...]I say terrorism is working here too.

"3. Kill every last terrorist[...]Does terrorism work here? Beats me.

"4. Make the cost of terrorism to the terrorists much greater than the benefits.[i.e, Nuke Mecca - ed.]Definitely a case of terrorism not working.

"Nobody in the West is willing to do #4, and of the few who are capable of doing #3, most of them don't bother. So, if most countries are generally using only #1 and #2, and #3 is uncommon and a wash anyway, then it's only natural that terrorism, on the whole, works."

I'm severely paraphrasing to encourage you to read the whole post. It's excellent. But I'm disturbed by the lack of a fifth option. Namely the Bush Doctrine. You know, what we're doing right now? Support goverments who police their own? Condemn and fight nations who don't? Yeah, it's expensive. Yeah, it's hard to guage the results (see previous post.) But I believe it's got the highest chance for success. By encouraging sovereign nation states to reform themselves, we defeat terrorism from within by changing the culture that breeds terrorists. From the actions described above, it's the only long term solution to a long term problem. The others are short term... and inadequate.