You repeatedly ask this question

Glenn - if you were POTUS for one term or two - how would you rectify the problems you so often lay out?

How would you reconcile the US and the Islamic worlds to the point where we are no longer antagonistic?

At this point, I think you have an obligation to offer your solutions.

You behave as if you're unaware of Bagram and Predator drone strikes, to name but two reasons for this antagonism or, more accurately, hatred. Glenn has written about both.

42% of Americans favor bombing Iran's "nuclear development sites" (49% of Republicans; 38% Democrats; 42% Independents), while 33% of Americans favor "invading with U.S. forces to remove the Iranian government from power" (40% Republicans; 32% Democrats; 30% Independents).

Why do you think these numbers are as high as they are? What they reflect, as far as I'm concerned, is the woefully unimaginative minds of our foreign policy "experts" (as well as, naturally, the sorry state of our supposedly liberal media). The public responds predictably in this manner because they've been schooled to do so. Bellicose comments from any number of elected officials and pundits seem to have led large percentages of the public to believe that obliteration is the only open channel available to the United States when confronted with a group of someones not to its liking.

Once the US aligned with Israel - did our treaty create enemies?

As you might imagine, this is a very complicated history. As far as I know, there is no "treaty" between the US and Israel, as such, since the two states have never been at war with each other.

US involvement in the Middle East was incremental following WWII as British influence receded due to a changing geopolitical landscape.

Rather than further derail GG's original post, I'll just provide a link you might want to look at.

Treaties based on rule of law will invariably create enemies, which is probably the reason for the existance of treaties in the first place - protection from said enemies.

Treaties exist in order to protect a nation from an enemy--but said enemy is created by the adoption of a treaty? So this hypothetical enemy didn't exist prior to a treaty's adoption? I'd suggest that this is not how we've created enemies. I'd say it's more a matter of brutality--military, economic and cultural imposition (ours) and suffocation (theirs) than a pen-to-paper issue.

John Anderson

Yeah...and the end of apartheid really improved things in Africa as a whole.

So ending apartheid wasn't worth the fight because South Africa didn't become, overnight, a Garden of Delights?

here early, I see. GG says

I don't think that the U.S. should be sending its military around the world to wage wars in order to get better governments for other countries - I also don't think that's what motivates what we do, nor do I think that we would succeed even if that were our motives

a point with which I personally agree for a variety of reasons: how is better governance accomplished by killing? That's an equation that doesn't add up. And why do so many assume that military action--raw force--is the only means to accomplish the betterment of the lives of others? And, of course, one could ask why the absence of this noble military response in Rwanda, Congo, Myanmar, etc.

Bbbobbb

When -- as was the case in Iraq during the worst phases of the insurgency -- bodies start showing up in morgues having been subjected to torture with power drills and other such cruelties that exceed anything the Americans ever committed, one nevers seems to hear muslims complain about that.

How would you know? Isn't there a reason why those seven paragraphs discussed yesterday were redacted? And God himself only knows (apart from the CIA) what other brutalities we're not in the least aware of. And how do we even know those bodies that appeared in Iraqi morgues were tortured by Iraqis? We can't even be sure of that.

silenced Your rage has unbalanced you. And you might want to provide some reputable links to support many of your statements. How will military action against Afghanistan and/or the Taliban and/or the Pushtun accomplish the cessation of brutality against women and children? Will killing a sufficient number (whatever that number may be) of Pushtun men bring about a tribal Enlightenment? Will a Pushtun chief say, "Oh, now that I know about Predators and see American combat troops here and there, I've come to realize that our treatment of women and children is immoral and offensive and must stop."

That makes no sense to me.

Doesn't climate change happen 4 times a year in North America?

It's such stupidity that allows half-wits like Inhofe get any airtime at all (nevermind actually be elected to the Senate to begin with).

Even someone as unscientific as me recalls the need, from college biology and anthropology, to study the long-term historical, archeological and geological record. You don't have to be Einstein to recognize this.

(morano) Despite the fact that 2009 has officially been "declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears ...

This outright lie (and liar) is one reliable source, eh Glock?

(Leonard) Officially! Really? Why didn't I get the memo? Thankfully, Morano provided a link to his source, which turns out to be... a blog post written by none other than Morano.

And to think Inhofe had the gall to cite

"environmental thuggery," citing as evidence a blog post I had written about the auto bailout.

Since thuggery is Inhofe's middle name (or is it stupidity?) you stand in fine company Glock.

(And you've got a super screenname--overflowing with tolerance, beauty and delicacy. All the indicators of a curious and philosophical outlook on life that seeks to understand the world around him by slaying the different)