Sherle Schwenniger's expansive article on a foreign policy for the Democrats is certainly the best thing I've read in the genre. I'll be saying a lot about it in the next few days (there is, unfortunately for all of you, lots to be said), but today let's do terrorism.
With regard to the Middle East in general, we must extract ourselves from what could escalate into what many Arabs see as a civilizational war with the Islamic world. This, however, does not mean disengaging, but rather repositioning the United States to be less of an overbearing dominant power. Our strategy toward Islamic jihadism ought to consist of lowering America's profile in the region and patiently containing bin Ladenism as it slowly loses its allure by being denied the foreign imperial enemy it needs in order to succeed. And the best way to lower our profile, without sacrificing any legitimate American interests, is to internationalize as much as possible US policy toward the Middle East--to reduce America's dominant, in-your-face presence in the region by withdrawing forces from Iraq and by sharing responsibility with the three other members of the "Quartet," the EU, Russia and the UN.
On a policy level, this really is how Democrats should think about these issues (aside from the quartet part: the EU, Russia, and the UN are not going to replace our endangered bodies and large checks with their own). Problem is, on a political level, it probably isn't how Democrats should talk about these issues. But as a way to conceptualize terror, the article gets most of it right. Terrorism should be viewed as the armed outlet of fringe movements that happens to be dangerous because of an unlucky combination of money, easily obtained weaponry, terrible conditions in the Arab world, and a heavy American presence around issues that breeds resentment in the Middle East. It's just that America -- and Democrats -- can't really say, "oh, good point, we're going to leave now."
