If that's what you think James, then I refuse to "get it" also. I've been in Japan and Germany, the two nations we fought in WWII. The people in Japan were not antagonistic to the US, even though we nuked them. The Germans were not antagonistic to the US, even though we fire-bombed them and destroyed whole German cities. We attacked and defeated their ideology. We did it in a very brutal way, killing many more civilians than were killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, or Pakistan -- millions more civilians, in fact. By destroying millions we didn't create reasons for them to attack us. We destroyed their ideology, and forbid them from resurrecting it.

I think we have forgotten the objective of war. It is not to destroy the people of an army or a nation. War must be directed to destroy their ideology. We didn't destroy the people of Japan, we destroyed State Shintoism. We didn't destroy the people of Germany, we destroyed Naziism (including its takeover of Christianity -- see "Positive Christianity"). We only kill people until the ideology no longer animates them and they surrender...sometimes that is a lot of killing, and it isn't limited to combatants.

You have to name the ideology. The animating ideology that we should be attacking is very obvious to an unprejudiced person who doesn't mind analyzing the facts, thinking for their own self, and drawing their own conclusions.

"Our religious dogma is no better than theirs". I agree with you James, our jihadists in the US and their dogma are no better than the dogma of the jihadists we fight.

If you're simply spouting your belief in some form of religious relativism, then yes, that type of simplistic dogma is a problem that keeps us from thinking clearly about the connection between religion and ideology. Thinking clearly about ideology, including religious influences on it, is a prerequisite to being able to effectively attack it. We weren't afraid to forcibly change religious components of an ideology following our victory in WWII. Are we afraid to today?