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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (228719)	4/25/2007 7:52:42 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 281500

Message 22142348 If we are talking about Al Qaeda, I happen to think we've gone at this all wrong. First of all, wars in the Islamic world were a bad idea. It's what OBL wanted, and he wanted it for a very good reason- because he knew it would be horrible PR for us in the ME, and good for Al Qaeda. We needed to win over hearts and minds, and instead we've lost them. We need to court moderate Islamic folks- and by "court" I do not mean find some separatists and arm them- I mean actually do some real diplomacy. We cannot defeat the Islamic "world" and we shouldn't even want to- most of the Islamic world doesn't care much about us. They just want to live their lives, and we should let them. Constructive engagement with the powers that do not threaten us, and a much bigger emphasis on international policing and homeland policing. Good police work, works. As I hope you know, the Muslim community both in the US and the UK has given vital tips to police to help stop crimes that might otherwise have been committed. I think a lot more needs to be said about this type of wholesome response from the Muslim community so you don't have morons running around saying things like "a fundamental tenet of Islam is terrorism"- when that clearly is not the case. Plenty of devout Muslims live their whole lives peacefully. That some of our enemies come from the Islamic world, should not make us over generalize- and make us believe we have more enemies than we actually have. Iraq is such an enormous cock up I'm not sure what we do. I lean toward the "declare victory and leave" model at the moment. I do not think we can crush Al Qaeda in Iraq (now that we have helped to create it there- I do NOT buy that it was there pre-Saddam- so please don't tell me about Mr. Broken leg again. I find that to be bull) with the military. Al Qaeda is an organization that will never respond to classic military might. War was/is the wrong strategy to deal with it. Al Qaeda is more analogous to a drug cartel, or a mafia family- international cooperation and good police work, imo, are the way to combat that problem, and since they get a lot of money from drugs, decriminalizing would kill their profits. Which is why I mention that in the post I linked.