I'm a talk radio freak. So sue me.
One of my favorite shows to call is hosted by the former Editor of Albany, NY's main paper, the Times Union. His name is Dan Lynch and he is the epitome of a Reagan Democrat.
He supports the war in Iraq on his own grounds. His predicate is that for over 30 years, the US and the rest of the west did next to nothing as terrorism bred and exported from the mid-east became increasingly frequent and increasingly violent. By invading Iraq and deposing Saddam, we, in his opinion, display for the rest of the region the price of screwing the the United States. Iraq, while not the most culpable exporter of terror, was plenty public about it and they were the country most easily defeated in war. According to Dan, 30 years of ignoring the problem brought on 9/11. To continue the same "do-nothing" strategy would be stupid and irresponsible after 9/11. And starting in Iraq (after Afghanistan) would be the least bad of a bunch of bad options.
So I called him.
I told him that the problem's roots were not in secular Iraq - 15 of 19 hijackers were from our oil buddies in Saudi Arabia. That by providing arms and ungodly sums of money to a small family in Saudi Arabia, while the rest of their people ate dirt, we are complicit in creating the conditions that make for fertile terrorist breeding grounds. I went on to say that repeating the same actions we've used since the dawn of time (invading and killing those we don't like - launching a new crusade) isn't likely to achieve any of the goals he'd like to see realized. Better than forcing change at the end of a gun would be influencing populations by building infrastructure, schools and hospitals.
At this point he cut me off - saying that he doesn't need to hear anymore "bumper sticker" strategy - he wanted to hear the nuts and bolts of how to implement these ideas. Specifically, if we are to bring change to Saudi Arabia, how to do it? If you don't want to deal with the royal family, who are you going to deal with if you marginalize them? The Wahhibi-ists? If not Hosni Mubarek in Egypt, what's the alternative?
I think those of us that want to present an alternative need to think this through. Yeah, our naked self-interest throughout the 20th century has created this problem, but unless we want to exponantiate our problems, we better find a viable alternative to the neo-con approach. And it is tough to argue with those that say "Hey man, after 9/11, the lesson should be that we can no longer ignore the mid-east. We have to cure - or excise - that cancer. And since we don't have a cure for it... well, excision it is." So what's the cure?