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MMMMMM, our favorite moderator, has long been a proponent of libertarianism, a political philosophy that wishes that emphasizes maximum personal freedom with minimum government intervention, dropped this gem on us:

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I have suggested that perhaps we might need a 10 or 15 million man army to actually take over the Middle East and re-mold it along the lines of a Germany or Japan. If the crazy Islamists keep attacking Europe and Australia, perhaps those citizens will get fed up with it enough to decide to do it along with us. Between all of NATO and ourselves, if we were to mobilize and prepare sufficiently, we could likely do it and maintain it for long enough to accomplish serious overhaul reform, although the time needed to actualize reform would be decades.

I'm not necessarly suggesting we do this, however. However if efforts to reform the region (as we are hoping to do in Iraq) ultimately fail, and if radical Middle Eastern countries acquire nuclear weapons, and if attacks on the free world persist and grow in severity or frequency, at some point it might well become the only solution. Whether we would have the will and the unity to do this would remain to be seen; at present we have not, nor are we prepared to embark on such a course. However if the Islamists keep attacking, and grow ever more powerful and threatening, it might force our hand in that direction. By the way, the indiscretion and stupidity of the Islamists in launching their attacks fairly indiscriminately, to the point of attacking even other Muslims (as in Bali), will help rally even fairly pacifistic opinion against them.

If France or other European were to suffer an attack or two on the magnitude of 9/11, for instance, you can bet that their general popular opinion would harden significantly against the Islamists. So in one sense, the Islamists might eventually prove to be their own worst enemies. If they keep attacking most everyone, sooner or later most everyone will be against them--and might become willing to mobilize for a major war.

In addition to the two groups mentioned at the beginning of this post, that is, the radical Islamists and the moderate Muslims, there are also many Muslims who fall somewhere in between on the political spectrum. For instance, bin-Laden has very high approval ratings in certain countries such as Kuwait. There are many non-activist or non-radical Muslims, who would not dream of attacking the West themselves, but who nevertheless tacitly rather approve of others carrying out such attacks.

All in all it is a very complex and difficult scenario. If democratic reform takes hold in Iraq and spreads, that may become enough of a solution. If it doesn't, we may end up seeing the equivalent of another world war at some point.

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it is so very INTERESTING to me that you propose going in and "molding" the middle east instead of just suggesting leaving the whole region alone. Do you feel that Islamic fanaticists would lose their preoccupation with the west if we lost our preoccupation with their oil?