James Taranto is a columnist for the Wall St Journal Online; he’s a funny writer and an evil reactionary bastard.

Mr Taranto also exemplifies the war-hawk tendency to believe that there are a fixed number of terrorists, who can only be dealt with by being killed. He says, "mentoring a child or dropping off groceries at a food bank has never produced one dead terrorist".

No, but those of us who aren’t idiots don’t have ‘making dead terrorists’ as our key anti-terrorism goal. Rather, we want to deter people from becoming terrorists in the first place – even if this sounds a bit liberal and wet compared to blowing up Arabs.

So what…? Well, this is just a hunch, and I haven’t read the scientific literature on the subject… but as an example, I’d be surprised to learn that most of the murderers in North Ossetia had happy and loving upbringings.