Lubbock, you and your fellow FreeConners can't seem to understand anything more complex than "Us versus Them" so my comment will probably be lost on you. I'll say it anyway, though.
We are not under threat by Muslims. We are under threat by a small handful of terrorists who happen to be Muslim. If we bomb or otherwise attack Muslims, we send a clear message that we are not trying to defend ourselves against terrorists we're trying to wipe out Islam itself and the terrorists are merely the rationalization. If this happens, the entire Muslim world will unite against us. Many other countries will unite against us I don't think that France, England, and the like will sit back while we launch a genocide campaign; they know what happens when you ignore a genocidal maniac.
The only way to stop the Muslim terrorists with bombs and conventional war is to kill all of them and if we do this, we'd have to kill everyone else too. If we kill all the Muslims, then every other nation, every race, every other religion, and every other demographic of any sort will rightfully worry that they're next. When the Muslims are dead and we stop killing, nobody will trust that we won't start again. Once it becomes clear that we intend to kill all Muslims, much of the world will unite against us and attempt to bring us down. We may be a military superpower (for now), but I don't think we can fight off everyone else in the world.
If, through some quirk of fate, we do manage to kill everyone else on the planet, we will likely die ourselves. Millions of Americans will have died in the war and millions more will have been injured. The country (and world) will be in ruins, and much of it will be contaminated with poison or radioactivity from nuclear weapons. Most of the survivors of the war will die quickly from injuries that can't be treated, radiation poison, or unexploded munitions. Most everyone else will die of starvation, since crop-growing will become all but impossible. Radiation from nuclear weaponry, which can linger for years, will cause early deaths from cancer and birth defects that inhibit reproduction. Eventually, the last survivors will die, though they may be able to sustain a meager existance for several generations.
You see, Lubbock, attacking Muslims with bombs in the hope of stopping terror is a strategy doomed to fail and doomed to a lot more. If we use that strategy and don't succeed, we die. If we do succeed, everyone in the world dies. It's a lose-lose situation.
It does make a good novel, though. I really should write it.
Say, if the FreeConners are pants-pissing over the threat of terrorism now, what will they do if the entire Muslim world unites against us?