I'm with the woman in the middle-- the "referee."

We need to take practical steps to identify these folks according to their individual behavior, the government needs to be a big part of it and everything else is just conceptual or a philosophical argument at this point because, for better or for worse, we *are* in this situation and neither increased belligerence nor backing off and becoming isolationist is going to solve it.

I would lean toward Ron Paul's side by saying that we need to cut out some levels of bureaucracy in the embassy system so that a phone call can make its freakin' way to the FBI in time to stop someone like Umar. Government seriously needs to be streamlined, a lot of the gatekeepers need to be removed and we need to get shit done, but not because we are the "occupiers" or b/c we buy into the enemy's wrongheaded POV on the U.S., but because when we are going into battle we need to get into our fighting trim, step up the PT, clean our weapons and inspect our Kevlar.

Who is really going into battle against the terrorists? Is it trained, armed military on the front lines? No! It is airport security, some dude at a desk in an embassy, a foreign national on a plane who jumps four rows of seats to deck someone setting their pants on fire, flight instructors in Florida and any number of normal citizens.

So we need to get our government bureaucracy, our domestic security and anyone employed in the transportation industry into fighting trim. They are the front line.

I hate to break it to you, but anywhere the U.S. goes on this planet we are occupiers. Someone can justify their hatred of us based on what we did to their ancestors. This is true right here on U.S. soil-- just go ask some of the Lakota in South Dakota or some native Hawai'ians or the Yupik in Alaska.

According to that mentality our whole nation is a mistake. If it is, what then? Exactly, life goes on.

We must continue making the best decision based on our current situation.

The whole point of Israel is that they can claim ancestral rights to the land based on their ethnic ties to the people who used to live there. They came and took it away from the Palestinians and other ethnic groups, but they were exercising an ancient claim on the territory.

However, Israel obviously booted out a bunch of people who were living there. And they themselves came, most recently, from Europe and Russia. So this brings up a legitimate Palestinian resentment that they have been "occupied" by the Jews, which is where Stein was going with his anti-Semitic comments.

The situation we find ourselves in is this:

We came over from Europe and took over a vast amount of territory that belonged to other peoples.
We set up a republican form of government and a banking system that allowed for citizen involvement and free trade.
We grew and expanded and took advantage of a vast amount of natural resources.
We entered the first World War, stepped up on the world stage and became a deciding factor in the success or failure of the most powerful nations on the planet.
We entered the second World War and flexed some real muscle on the world stage (especially in Japan).
We came out dominant, a superpower. We duked it out with the U.S.S.R.
We supported Israel.
We did all sorts of heinous things to "commies" in every corner of the globe.We won the cold war (by attrition).
Our success attracted waves and waves of immigrants. It also earned us the resentment of many poorer nations.
Some misguided individuals with too much time and money on their hands (and some big egos) decided that NYC, DC and the Pentagon were legitimate targets and killed folks on American soil.
We went on to "occupy" Iraq, but at the time, the terrorists had other reasons for bombing us.

So now we're involved in counter-terrorism, which cannot be done in an entirely isolationist manner. We have to get out there and hit the threat at its source. We were misguided in attacking Iraq, but we certainly can't be worried about being perceived as occupiers (in principle) because we need to go into Pakistan and Afghanistan and wherever else and root these guys out.

We certainly could do better with both our domestic and international counter-terrorism efforts, and we need to unmuddy the waters when it comes to immigration and oil and other issues creeping in to our military policy, but if we want to continue to exist as a Nation we can't just stand by and allow any group to attack us on our soil.

These terrorist groups will resent us wherever we are. We should listen and understand their motivations, but only in order to stop them.

All the rest of this stuff about how we are perceived by others ends up being navel gazing and opens us up to exploitation.

We need to stop worrying about hurting anyone's feelings and start figuring out how to save their lives.

runaheadofme, if you're interested in stopping terrorism you do have to consider the causes.  If the cause is occupation and aggression, then if you pour in and kill more you should expect more terrorism.  This is exactly what has happened since 9/11.

OBL has been very clear about what motivated him to attack us.  #1 is our support of Israel.  Israel and the U.S. have stood alone against a peaceful settlement to the Palestinian situation for the last 30 years.  Every year at the U.N. they vote on a peaceful settlement at the 1967 borders.  It's the whole world on one side supporting peace, including the whole Arab world.  It's Israel and the U.S. on the other.  The other thing OBL complains about is the starvation campaign in Iraq which killed about a million children over 13 years, imposed by the U.S. and Britain.  Additionally he objects to the puppet regimes we've installed which suppress the citizens and prohibit democracy.

To react to these objections with a ratcheting up of the atrocities against Muslims is the very root of the problem.  If your government was interested in keeping the citizens safe then what you'd do is address the legitimate grievances and see how much success you had.  What our government has done instead is expand the occupation, which is the very motivation of terrorists in the first place.  It doesn't make sense if the goal is to keep us safe, but it does make sense if you want to occupy the part of the world with the most important natural resources that exist.