A parasite, when it loses its host, dies.
There are societies on Earth that are not hundreds, but THOUSANDS of years behind the rest of the world. As in, they still live in the woods, build grass huts, and hunt with spears. Yes, I mean such societies exist TODAY. In the year 2007. I had a hard time believing it too.
I don't have a hard time believing it. Some of them exist in India (well, that's not saying much, because of some of pretty much
everything exists in India). They number in the low millions, if I'm not wrong.
The point is, they have not tasted the fruits of modernity - for once you do that, there is no going back. And also, these societies are now slowly integrating into the mainstream.
It's quite funny, in a way. In a treatise on governmental policy written sometime around 200 B.C., an Indian political theorist/analyst has written about how to deal with jungle tribes (back in those days, they could threaten small villages or new settlements). At that time, too, people in the gigantic cities, specially the capitals like Pataliputra or Indraprastha, must have had a hard time believing that such societies existed in spite of everything. It is also notable that even in those days, there was a policy of integration to be followed.
Oh, and something else I should mention: Osama Bin Laden is college-educated. Arab schools dysfunctional? No problem for him. Islam's economy is dysfunctional? Well, guess what--Osama got his financial fortune over HERE in our world. He got to have his cake and eat it too: clinging to Islam without having to deal with Islam's failures.
That is why I suggested isolation. He would not have been able to get an education here. Trade agreements being reciprocal, he would not have been able to make his fortune here.
It's actually a pretty sound solution you came up with, and I would have approved of it had it worked, but I don't think it'll work.
It's not a short-term solution. It is not aimed at simply stopping terrorism. It is aimed at the complete, utter, and irrevocable annihilation of its root. We will have to take the "yearly terrorist hit" until this time comes - and it may come after twenty years, it may come after fifty. But come it will.
This reminds me of a legend I've heard with regard to that same theorist.
Once, as Kautilya was travelling down a road near his city, he happened to step upon a thorny bush that had grown in the way. He found that he had pricked his foot, and a thorn had entered his flesh. He took out another thorn, and used it to remove the first. A boy who lived nearby watched this silently.
The next day, the same boy saw Kautilya pouring something that looked like milk on that bush. Intrigued, he went closer, and asked him as to what he was doing.
Kautilya replied, "This is sweet buttermilk. This bush pricked me yesterday. Now, when I pour this on its roots, it will be absorbed. You see that anthill nest to it? Those ants will come, and will eat away at the roots of this plant, and finish it off. Had I simply cut off the plant, it would have grown again. But now, it can never hurt anyone again - it is utterly destroyed."
It is that which I am aiming for. Do not merely cut off the plant (terrorism). Finish off the roots.