Those friends your talking about are the same people who vilify us in their press, provided most of the funding and personel to al Qeada, and have the most repressive authoritarian governments in the world. Please tell me why we should care what they think? What can they do if we just ignore them? The fact is, victory as a demonstration of POWER will put these spinless cowards in our pocket. What are you worried about? Will the Islamic world hate us more than they do now? Who cares? The debate in the US over the importance of Islamic world opinion, was over on 911. Most Americans now agree that they hate us and there is nothing we can do about it. What we can do something about is to make sure they understand that if they attack us they DIE.