Or, you could just give Israel a few planes to deal with the occasional Iranian nuclear facility, and keep propping up Saudi Arabia, and let the millennium old Arabic/Persian hatred keep the rest of the region occupied... no risk to your own population and a measure of deniability for some of the worst atrocities.

the other option is to stop living in a sheltered black and white world and realize that people are motivated by the necessity to fulfill their needs and will gravitate to any party willing to satisfy them. Take Lebanon or the Gaza strip for instance, the locals are living in squalor, and it ain't the west who are the ones to try to fix it, its the terrorist groups.

Of cource, you could ask for their disarmament, but asking for disarmament is a very different thing than asking for the total disbandment of these groups like what is currently happening, and as much as I hate to say this, if Hamas and Hezbollah disappear over night, whose going to provide the necessary social and administrative services to keep these areas from total anarchy?

This is why Iraq has been such a spectacular failure, not because of the removal of a powerful figure, but because the invaders decided to sack the entire government bureaucracy and there was no one left to run the country (and an army cannot run a country without a civilian bureaucracy these days).

This is why separatist nations like many of the old USSR republics have faired not so badly, because the separatists developed an alternative legal system and not just a militant force.

Finally, I thank you for bringing up the Kurds, because they are an excellent example of how a mature separatist group, unmolested by western powers, can from the basic institutions of government and transition to autonomy. Imagine if the Palestinian groups were nurtured by the west back when they were all communists rather than islamists!

Reasonable long-term stability can be fostered by promulgating the values of democracy, secularism, women suffrage...etc

Terrorism can be reduced to an acceptable level by bringing down theocracies where they are found as well as the governments that spread such ideas and encouraging the spread of secularism.

With Iraq as an oil producing nation outside of OPEC, it can be used to undermine those repressive regimes supported by oil money.

Using Afghanistan to construct a pipeline from Turkmenistan through to either Pakistani or Indian ocean ports (where oil and gas and can be transported via ship) and completing the pipeline from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan would provide a new source of energy from ex-Soviet republics to Europe and the rest of the world. Again this can be used to undermine OPEC -and- Putin.

With the breaking of the OPEC cartel, Russia's inability to maintain their monopoly on energy to Europe and with cheaper sources of energy, the collapse of their totalitarian regimes are assured. Iran will also be shut out, possibly increasing the likelihood of the downfall of their regime.

Freedom will reign but the War on Terror has to be elevated to the next level and a greater effort has to be made stabilising Iraq and Afghanistan. No offence but your solution seems a little gratuitous for its own sake...

@Tpiddy

The Kurds are the -perfect- example of positive Western intervention not the opposite! It was the no-fly zone imposed unilaterally by the U.S and her allies which shielded it from Saddam's reach and allowed it to develop.

Ok a few things the US needs to accept in terms of the Middle East, Democracy, secularism, and equality CANNOT be forced on a population and be expected to last.  I don't deny these are all good things but they need to be reached on their own.

Justinian I offer you an even more efficient method, you have problems with the Middle East get rid of it.  A few well placed nuclear bombs can reduce the entire Middle East (be sure to include Israel) to a smoldering crater.  Once radiation drops to safe levels send in armed men to kill of any survivors.  The terrorists are dead, the people who support them are dead, and you're guaranteed no problems from that area for many, many years.

Intrinsically it's efficient to punishing communitarian communities with communal punishments, since they do think alike and the idea of punishments limited to individual members of those communities is laughable to them

but it will escalate and I'm not sure if any civilised nation has the stomach to step up the escalation further and further

I must thank you Justinian  for this post, because it has made me laugh for a good half an hour. So you say that in order no defeat terror you need to give terror?

"this will have a detrimental effect on public opinion"

I assure you that if USA ever does this, the public opinion (at lest foreign) will decrease at a faster rate down at this moment in time.

Justinian, it is your away of thinking that makes me hate some of the USA people, the way that you think that you can do whatever you think without any persecution is so stupid do you know?

You will not defeat terror by inflecting terror into others. Would UN do anything? dunno about that, but Russia and China would turn there nose away when they found that US is targeting anyone who does not like them.

"I don't get it, why is the US still involved in that war, they lost all ready but are just in denial, currently 8500 Billion dollar in dept for a country. Isn't it time that people go home and work on there own country for a minute b for they gonna invade another country for some Oil and other things. And [beep] that country up and then wanne bring democracy and all that BS to them to save em ^^. Put that pride away and look back home what is happening there." Americans normally are lack of theory of mind, they will not understand your away of thinking. But you are right, its so strange, like for example, when Timor Leste asked for independence the USA didn't go to defend them when they were being killed by Indonesia,

I didn;t bother reading all of this. I do have a few questions though.

1st. Why does terrorist straight away mean the Middle East? Or Islamists? Remember the IRA? They didn't shout "praise be Allah" (as far as I'm aware). The French terrorists (who were not islamists), American terrorists who bombed part of America. Those goes were white christians btw. It strikes me that 'the war on terror' should be called 'the war on the middle east'.

2nd. "1: Iraq is becoming more stable.  Less attacks, less deaths, and the al Sadr has agreed to ceasefires, further reducing violence.  What do you see as an indication of victory, then?"

I forget. When Did Bush declare victory on the aircraft carrier? What are the terms to delcare victory? I thought peace would be one. Apparantly PR is one.

Wow Zarf, you expect people in the politics forum to back up their ramblings? Oh that