Reply #48: Several ways, actually...

[IrateCitizen]

1. Approach it for what it really is, which is a situation requiring massive international cooperation and intelligence sharing. You don't achieve cooperation by bullying others, but rather as approaching them as general partners. We blew the biggest surge in global goodwill toward us in the post-WWII era by the way we behaved since 9/11.

2. You aren't going to break up terrorist networks by dropping bombs (some of which hit innocent women and children) -- you attack them by cutting off their financing and through law-enforcement and inflitration efforts. People in Arab countries should be perfect for infiltrating these groups and informing on them -- but they aren't going to do so while we are raining bombs down on them and kicking in their front doors. Phil Gramm's opposition to cracking down on banking regulations that enable terrorists to hide funds is rather perplexing on this level as well -- but hey, you don't want to piss off Citigroup or UBS Warburg for something as trivial as preventing terrorism, do you?

3. Don't invade and occupy a country that had nothing to do with the attacks but happens to have lots of oil. Now we're constructing 14 PERMANENT bases in Iraq. How do you think this looks after OBL himself predicted that the US would invade and occupy and oil-rich country in the ME?

4. Support internal democracy in the ME. Our record in undermining democratic movements and propping up authoritarians is absolutely abysmal. We overthrew Mossadeq for the Shah, and ended up with Khomeni as a result. We are currently supporting people like Mubarak in Egypt, the current ruler of Uzbekistan (who boils people alive that oppose him), and the corrupt Saudi royal family. People who live in these regions and hunger for democracy in a way that we can never understand notice these things, and they notice who is behind it.

There's four points off the top of my head. If necessary, I could expand this list further in the future.