[Cacophonous]

It may be a chicken-and-egg conundrum. I have often felt our meddlesome foreign policy -- including Gulf War I and our undying support of Israel -- makes more enemies than it prevents.

I think the solution should be to start minding our own business; that greatest of Americans, George Washington, advised this, and he was right.

[Mr. Mojo]

our undying support of Israel -- makes more enemies than it prevents.

Forget it; you answered my question (that I posed in post #22) with that remark.

[Anamensis]

It may be a chicken-and-egg conundrum. I have often felt our meddlesome foreign policy -- including Gulf War I and our undying support of Israel -- makes more enemies than it prevents.

Of course, my reply is 1) we do not fashion our foreign policy to please stateless extremists, nor should we, and 2) if you think it would have been okay for Saddam to become a world power to replace the USSR and rival us-- and there is plenty of evidence that he dreamt of a pan-Arab socialist juggernaut that would be a superpower-- then our world views are too different to support an extended conversation as we'll have no mutually agreeable starting point.