High tech societies are inherently fragile. That's why a policy of bullying people with military might is ultimately self-destructive. We cannot hope to intimidate the rest of the world into leaving us alone - we can't hope to make every electric line safe from sabotage, we can't make every phone line secure, we can't seal our roads and bridges, we can't protect our food and water supply. We are dependant on good will. All advanced societies are. We need to acknowledge this and change our policies accordingly.
To be creating more and more people who wish us ill is the strategy of primitive cultures who only recognize the rule of brute force. That's not how complex, high technology societies work. And that's not a society that i want to live in. Maybe Israel has been forced to accept such a stance vis-a-vis the world, but it's absurd for America. Our strength is in our diverstiy and our culture and our resources, in our largeness. But our wired, global culture is only as strong as its weakest link.
We need to reach out to the entire planet, by building schools and hospitals and water treatment facilities - we need to offer the world the benfeits of our advanced culture and invite them to be part of it. The right considers this a sign of weakness. But in the long term, the recogniton of this "weakness" is the key to our strength. The barbarity we are participating in now cannot be anything but a downward spiral that makes us less and less strong with each new horror.
If I were president, I would convene an emergency council of the world's mopst repected leaders, from the Dalai Lama to Nelson Mandela to the Pope to Ayatollahs and Zen Roshis. I would apologize for allowing our foreign policy to be hijacked by fools. I would announce that all revenues from Iraqi oil would go only to Iraqis - in the form of a monthly check. I would ask the Council of the Wise to authorize an international force to keep the peace in Iraq - and announce that the United States would pay all costs. I belive that a show of goodwill would be accepted by the world as a recognition that we want to once again be the America of the Statue of Liberty, not of George Bush. I think the world is just waiting to embrace that America again.