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Ron Paul's problem--and presumably yours as well--is that we already know that Islamic terrorists are more than willing to destroy their own people, their own mosques, their own nations if it means killing the "infidels."

I understand "M.A.D." although I'd argue with the idea that communists were ever considered "sane", given that they too killed millions of their own people. The only thing the we had going for us in that fight was that because they were atheists, they weren't quite so ripe to collectively destroy themselves.

Do me a favor, please quit talking to me as though I've lived under a rock when it comes to "understanding Islam". I've known what a Muslim was for as long as I can remember - -especially that if I brought a guy home who was Muslim, that would have been about the one and only grounds for being disowned. I went to university with a Saudi Prince and worked with the son of a Jordanian member of Parliament -- that was all back in the 1970's. I've been to the ME twice in 1984 & in 2000. And I number among my friends some prominent anti-jihadist writers.

I've got a pretty good grasp of what Islam is and what radical Islam is, as well as having a grasp of historical context. I want to fight them as bad as you do, but the way we are handling this is doing us more harm than good. It's time to hit the reset button.

Our current policies -- supported largely by fear-mongering -- are not making us any safer and in fact are draining us dry economically and turning us into slaves in our own country. In the name of WOT, US citizens can now be pulled off the street by the government and detained offshore indefinitely with no legal recourse. Our parents rejected this kind of political insanity when the threat of communism loomed. Why are we allowing this in the name of the WOT?

IMHO, it's because we are are "the terrorized" and we are functioning like traumatized, terrorized people who are so scared that we shoot at anything that moves. And what the terrorists haven't done to us, we've allowed our politicians to do to us -- getting scanned and strip searched at the airport, being scared into submission, being hopped up to go turn over some other Muslim hornets nest somewhere else on the other side of the world "for our own good"-- and we are fighting against what? Some 8th century scimitar wielding weirdos who happened to get lucky with some airplanes ten years ago when our intelligence services had their head up their butts?

And BTW, the hijackers weren't Iraqi, weren't Afghani, or Pakistani or Libyan or any of the other places we've gone to war since 9/11-- they were Saudi. So why isn't Saudi Arabia "a glass factory" if we are really fighting terror? And oh yes, I know we need protection here because Muslims could smuggle a tactical nuke into the US and hit a major city". "Smuggle"? Really? They could have driven a damn parade across our Southern border with blimps and full scale nukes for the last ten years, and there would have been nothing to stop them. Because we've been too worried about the border between Iraq and Iran to care about securing our own sovereign borders.

So please don't assume that anyone who disagrees on how we are handling things is "naive" or "doesn't get it" -- I get it, Ron Paul gets it, it's just that we think there is a better way that doesn't have us killing ourselves, bankrupting ourselves and handing over our liberty -- the very foundation of our way of life -- to nameless, faceless government bureaucrats -- all to "keep us safe from terrorists". So when that is done, who is going to keep us safe from a government that's thrown out the Constitution?

What I see here is that the vast majority of us on FR are old, and we think that the way that we see things is the way it is -- "Ron Paul is nuts" and God is in His Heaven and the world is flat.

But the younger generation doesn't see it that way -- and by next election, generations X, Y and the Millennial generations will all be of voting age and will collectively outnumber us Baby-boomers. To which I say, Thank God! They want and deserve a future that has some hope, not the horrible vision that we've accepted for them -- of feckless faithless politicians and endless police actions, debt, perpetual poverty and hopelessness. They still have faith in Liberty -- I wish that we all did, but most of us have given up and compromised. The least we can do is try not to blow the planet up before they get a chance to claim their country and their future, before it's too late.

"Because they were atheists?" Really??? I think, ultimately, sanity is far more likely of a reason than any hesitance due to them being atheists. Fear of their own deaths, yes, but doubtful that it was due to anything other than their desire to enjoy their fat little commie lives and those of their families.

Americans are not atheists, but we possessed the same desire for self-preservation.

I do not perceive that in the radical Islamists. They appear far more ready to destroy in the name of Allah regardless of the personal costs. When a mother is willing to celebrate the fact that her son has strapped on a bomb in order to kill a crowd of civilians, then there is a threat beyond any that we have faced before.

". . . I get it, Ron Paul gets it, it's just that we think there is a better way that doesn't have us killing ourselves . . ."

I don't think you do. I think that Ron Paul's understanding of the world and the way in which people react is naive. Libertarian by its very nature has a naive understanding of human nature that borders on the same level as that of Marxists. Both assume a Utopian type of human being that will behave himself solely out of self-interest (in the case of libertarianism) or the state (in the case of the Marxism.

It is a view which fundamentally misunderstands human nature and what drives us.

As for the last, we are our government. It is incumbent upon all of us to "ride heard" over our elected representatives. We have on a number of occasions ceded certain levels of our liberty for security in times of crisis. We have retrieved that liberty once those crises were resolved. However that is a side issue which impinges little on our foreign policy which is the topic of conversation.