I'm now split -- I've been hearing Ron Paul's idea about getting out of every where. That would probably calm things down, and slow down the creation of radical Islamists. The next question is would that allow the Islamic creep back to the dark ages?

That's the problem. Does anybody have a good solution or a solution at all? Hirsi Ali suggests sending moderate Christians in to Muslim communities to show that they have a nicer god (turn the other cheek instead of convert or murder the infidel). This seems a deadly proposition.

Muslim thinking (what the Quran commands) is anti-reason, anti-freethinking, and anti-democracy. Kind of a problem.

Does anyone remember that George W. Bush was talking a lot about isolationism before 9/11?

That isolationist talk stopped that day, but before that point, he said a lot of stuff about how we had enough problems in the United States without going out to solve other people's problems.

I don't think hiding and curling up into a little ball is going to help.

I do think the world has a bunch of perfectly reasonable people who are Muslim and relatively few nucases. It seems like the nutcases pay poor people to do terrorist stuff and are sometimed charismatic enough to con or brainwash people into it.

What we need to do is give power back to the regular people, who want a decent life and try to convince them that the best way to get what they want is to help prevent the lunatics from doing stupid stuff.

Does Palestine really need more land? Or do they need some good ways of making a living so their kids have some hope of a good life.

If I were in charge I'd cut off all foreign aid.

I do think we need to keep a few bases scattared about the globe for rapid response time, but if and when were attacked we blow the shit out of every structure in the country that attacked us and then leave.

People want to donate of their own free will to help rebuild? Thats fine, but no government funds.

Also cut off all trade, we've had an embargo agaist cuba for decades over nothing more than a pising match between washington power players(a lot of whom are probbly dead) and Castro.

Refuse to honor treaty agreements with allied countries that refuse to embargo terrorist dominated countries.

Either we dont negotiate with terrorists on every level(including international) of we stop pretending we dont when everyone knows full well that we do.

FWIW:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05kristof.html?_r=1

franko,

He has some valid points -- but he and many others refuse to ask some pertinent questions:

1. Why the "developers" chose the name "The Cordoba Initiative"?
   
2. Where is the money coming from?
   
3. Why won't the Imam denounce Hamas and Hezbollah?
   
4. Does the Imam still say its the United States fault for 9/11?
   
5. Why are they so insistent on being on ground zero? What's wrong with a place five-ten blocks up the road?

Once you can answer those questions -- I'd be glad to discuss it in more detail.

Jim P, there's also the fact that the iman has refused to pay property taxes on the property -- and apparently the city is going to let that slide. If I applied for a building permit on a property with past due taxes, I'd be laughed out of City Hall, in any city in the country.

And regarding Ron Paul, this is one area where I think he's way off. The causality is reversed -- if radical Islam arose as a reaction to the Iraq War, then who was responsible for 9/11? That veers off into truther territory. And I seriously doubt that ignoring radical Islam will make it go away, even if we close our borders. Although I am in favor of luj's approach for the next time, and the next President should announce it publicly: if Islamists attempt a serious attack on the U.S., and we find out that a particular country has aided and abetted, we bomb that country flat and bounce the rubble. Maybe then certain Middle East nations will think twice before they vote a terrorist organization to be their government.

Franko:

Why is the Arab world frozen in time?

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-05-26/opinion/bird.arab.modernity_1_arab-world-egypt-gamal-abdel-nasser?_s=PM:OPINION