I do not agree that we should do nothing.
I believe it is our foreign policy in the Middle East and our support of Israel that makes a lot of people in the Middle East hate us. By foreign policy I mean examples like using Afghanistan as a pawn in our war against the Soviet Union, and our military actions to benefit our corporations like Iraq. Osama bin Laden is using the same bleed techinique we taught the mujadeen that helped lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bush is playing right into it.
Personally, I think we should be spending the money we have spent on Iraq on getting off our dependence of foreign oil. I would rather pay hundreds of billions on cleaner and less terrorist funding sources of energy than on military force. Rather than providing larger tax benefits for large SUVs than for hybrid vehicles, I believe we should increase the tax benefit for hybrids and create a tax penalty for SUV buyers. I could not find a good statistic, but it looks like the US uses around 250 billion gallons of oil a year. There are 42 gallons per barrel. So that is about 6 billion barrels a year. At approximately $50/barrel that is $300 billion a year we are spending on oil. I believe the current statistic is that Iraq has cost us about $145 billion so far, if we spent that money on lowering our oil usage we could probably make back the money over not too many years.
One strategy we could have taken in the Middle East would have been to use economic sanctions against countries who would not implement an anti-terrorism agenda which would be defined as the following. Egypt and Israel have a treaty where Egypt is not supposed to incite violence against Israel, but it is not well enforced.
- Arrest known terrorists within the countries borders (If the UN can identify them and their location)
- Institute anti-hate laws. School textbooks may not teach hate.
- Religous leaders may not preach hate or violence
- News media may not publish any terrorist media or identify individuals taking credit for terrorism
(Remove the martyrdom through the media)
- News media may not publish anti-semetic/racist information or promote violence. This does not mean
that news media cannot publish articles about Israeli troops killing civilians if it really happens. It does
mean that they cannot call terrorists and natzis heros. They cannot publish articles saying the
holocaust never happened (but then a week later call a natzi who killed millions of jews a hero), or
claim that Jews bake bread using the blood of babies.
Religous leader first violations should be fined, second violations should involve criminal charges.
News media first violations should be fined, second violations should involve criminal charges against those involved, and third violations should involve shutting down the news media responsible. Underground news would surface promoting hate, but removing it from the mainstream would help remove the credibility.
People will still be racist in their day-to-day lives, but removing it from the mainstream media should eventually have an impact on the culture.
Make Israel adhere to these same sanctions: they may not promote violence and hate against other Middle East countries or be cut off funding. The US would have to be willing to use these sanctions against Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which we probably are not currently willing to do. Use UN inspectors to verify that these sanctions are being adhered to. News media is easy to randomly sample. Undercover UN inspectors would attend random services (Jewish and Muslim). It may take decades for this to have any affect, but it could be well worth it. We probably would want to take on one country at a time.
Comments? Could the US influence the media of another country? Can we mediate the hate between the two sides?
[Edit: I do not believe we can do anything like this any time soon, definitely not the next 4 years. We have lost all credibility we had in the region and in the UN with Iraq.]