[lehighguy]

Your plan is to wait for the middle east to fix itself. Your plan is to completely withdraw American influence and leave the ME to its own devices. I don't think that works. I don't see them fixing thier own problems within the next century without help.

Your plan is best exemplified in Iran where the French/German plan is employed. We tell Iran is has to reform, so they hold token elections in which the clerics retain all real power and nothing changes. Meanwhile they are going to develope nuclear weapons sometime in the next decade and who's gonna stop them.

We broke the ME. We broke it with our oil dependency. We broke it by starting the Iran/Iraq war. We broke it by supporting half the dictator crackpots over there. We have a debt we need to pay. We have to undo the damage we've done with our shortsighted oil based policies.

By deposing dictators we give the moderates of a country the ability to pursue real change in thier social fabric. That is what democracy allows. As long as single despots and oligarchs can strike down any change the ME will remain the same and terrorism will only grow.

If anything our policy should be more comprehensive. We should stop supporting the Saudi royals. We should reduce oil dependence so they lose thier power base. We should do a more competent job of rebuilding Iraq.