I know President Bush has been criticized for taking a preemptive stance on terror, but I'm wondering if there are any feasible alternatives. What do you think?

Pre-emptive strike.

If we wait to respond after we are attacked, the attack could be a crippling one. It could be an attack on a political target like Capital Building while congress is in session, or worse, the white house or it might be a military target like Pearl Harbor where a majority of our Pacific Fleet is like in 1941

When you say "Pre-emptive elimination of likely terror sources ", do you only mean "bomb them before they can bomb us", or would you include:

"try to find out what motivates people to see America as an adversary that can only be dealt with through terrorist attacks, and seek to modify that perception, if necessary by modifying those aspects of American foreign policy that create the perception"

Both possible interpretations seek to prevent terroist attacks before they happen, but one seems to me to be more likely to produce lasting change than the other.

If your option "pre-emptive elimination" DOES include my second interpretation, even if it is in addition to the first, then I would vote for that. If it only includes the first, then I vote OTHER - and my explanation is as above.

IMO a preemptive strike should only be used in case of extreme emergency. It should not have been used in Iraq. War should be put off as long as possible unless a demonstrable, provable, and clear imminent threat faces a nation from another country,

Using preemptive strikes as a world leader, we undermine our credibility when counseling other nations to avoid war. We acted as a role model in Iraq and have made other preemptive wars more likely.

I agree with Julian in that we definitely can be proactive in dealing with terrorism without necessarily waging war on other countries. This is not an either/or situation.

But the introduction of this ill-defined preemptive strike doctrine in the 21st century is one of the most dangerous foreign policy moves the United States has made in a long time.

Waiting to be attacked is signing the death warrant of thousands of Americans, would you rather that, or kill terrorists? [I'm not responding to you Eeyore, just stating my opinion]

CP

(CP thanks for the note so I better understand your post)
I would have us work to create a much more effective international police force with cooperation of international government to track down the individuals who are involved in terror and catch them and punish them for being criminals.

As I am sure you got from my post even if you disagree, I said nothing about sitting around waiting to get attacked by terrorists.

The US needs to learn to balance our 'interests' with being a member of the international community. Lately we've been pretending we're an 800-lb gorilla that can do anything we want, screw the consequences... and now we're seeing the consequences. Instead of bombing the planet to get our revenge, we need to realize that it is our actions that caused the problem in the first place. We can't just run around and think we can do anything we feel like with no responsibilities to others and no consequences for our actions. Reality just doesn't work that way.

'War' on terrorism should be used with caution - creating hatred (by attacking preemptively or sometimes even in response) is not the best way of preventing terrorism. The focus should be on security and (as Julian suggests) modifying foreign policy in such a way so that America is no longer seen as such a target. IMO, a preemptive war is doing the opposite of the latter goal.

I have to agree with oliver.

the problem with preemptive attacks is that the terrorists will look at us attacking people on the possibility they might attack us. terrorist will likely adobt this veiw and say "we need to attack them before they can attack us" then we say the same thing. and the cycle starts again. in other words if we strike pre-emptivly, they will strike preemptivly and so on and so on.

we need to, as julian said, look at WHY they want to attack us in the first place. then from there modify our foreign policy to minimize enemies (we will always have people that don't like us) and minimize their hatred for us.

I think terrorists should be actively searched for and stopped, but not through war. Special forces, police officers and Echelon should pretty much take care of that job.