[Will]

For all, but specifically Starhawk:

If you haven't already, pick up a copy of "The Ugly American" by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick at your local library. It focuses on the arrogance that was prevalent in the 1950's and 1960's era policies in southeast Asia, and how it helped the Soviets gain an even larger foothold in the area because of the unbelievable ignorance and arrogance of American foreign policy. In its time, it turned around American policy, and probably helped the US win the Cold War. Today, you can make very good parallels with the American foreign policy worldwide under the Bush Administration, and see how Islamic terrorist Jihad organizations are utilizing the same mistakes to take advantage of our position, and possibly bring us down through guerilla warfare (not to mention through pissing off the rest of the world).

If you have read the book, I suggest reading through it again to see the parallels. In my personal opinion, the countries of the Middle East were screwed up by the territory borders drawn up after the World Wars by Britain, France, the US, and the Allies, and are not yet ready for a democratic style of government (for the nitpickers, republican style of government, there is no true democracy on Earth at the moment AFAIK). But if we are going to install such a style of government, we do it through the work of aid workers, who facilitate the creation of businesses in the area and instill the social values of elections, fair judicial systems, and human rights, etc. The way is not through a military invasion followed by the creation of what is essentially a puppet government and an election process that will inevitably degenerate into complete failure. A democratic system will not work unless the citizens of the area want to make it work, and we're not making that happen right now.