Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

OK, we pretty well know what the problem is regarding the U.S. and Islam. So what might our objectives be? Let me list a couple...

• Israel and Palestine reach whatever agreements needed for them to peacefully co-exist as neighbors, without the need for an 18-foot wall betweent them.
• We begin to get advanced warnings from the "regular" citizens of Iraq as to where the terrorists are living, where their caches of weapons are, and forewarnings of when and where IED's have been planted to kill American soldiers.
• The world must begin to have some influence on Iran in order for them to stop their nuclear weapons production. Having nuclear facilities for electricity generation is OK, but they'd have to agree to inspections.
• Get the "regular" citizens of both Palestine and Lebanon to report where the terrorists are that are shooting rockets into Israel and where they're shooting them from. The measure of effectiveness will be a reduction of the frequency of rocket attacks on Israel.
• Somehow we resolve the political strength of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban is a legitimate political force in eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. To simply say that the Taliban is the enemy and must be eradicated is probably not a winning strategy. Chances are they must be a peaceful part of the solution to political stability on that area. There's no point trying to force American social standards on an organization that is not only accepted, but is popular with a large part of the population of those two countries.
• There are other objectives, of course. But for starts, this is enough.

So how do we accomplish those objectives? By having our President travel to the Middle East and tell them in no uncertain terms that regardless of what they might believe, Americans are really good people who have already done a lot for them? By going on to tell them to quit obsessing over the existence of Israel? To tell them to simply get over it and begin to worry more about the situation inside Islam and forget about the U.S.--we've really done a whole lot in their behalf already?

All that stuff is true, of course, and that's the message the conservative columnist from the Washington Post says should be carried to the Middle East. Does anyone think that kind of foreign policy message would be effective in achieving our objectives above? Will the Muslims actually begin to move towards the accomplishment of our objectives by us telling them to forget about Israel and get their butts in gear to resolve their own internal issues?

Nice column. But I can sure see why the columnist isn't ever going to make a living in the area of foreign relations.