That's the trillion dollar question!
The pessimist in me sees all this terror and, as Friedman puts it, the cancer that is consuming Islam never coming to an end. I mean, how do you reason with these kinds of zealots?
But the optimist in me (and more importantly, the humanist in me) believes that humans can overcome evil. I think it's going to take a long time for radical Islam to be eradicated but we're starting to hear more and more Muslim liberals speak up.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is doing this. EDIT: Forgot she's no longer a Muslim! Pretty sure she's agnostic now. Anyways, my point is that there are ppl that come from these hell-holes that want to eradicate sharia and all that other zealotry shit. Not enough (yet) but I think they'll find their voices, especially if they're not shouted down w/cries of racism.
And I also think that, however slowly, economic imperatives will force the M.E. to adapt and change. Oil won't be enough to run their economies forever.
Those are kind of macro reasons for my optimism. What do we do in the meantime? Encourage reasonable groups like the Kurds (an actual success story in Iraq!). Try to create stable, secure places for doing business on the fringes of the M.E./Africa and keep squeezing all that chaos until it's gone.
If you're interested in reading more about this stuff, I highly, HIGHLY recommend
Tom Barnett's book,
The Pentagon's New Map.
