I am not left wing.
I support and love my country, and I want to do whatever I can to help preserve our form of government. Our system of government, though not perfect, is a beacon of hope to the oppressed because of the degree of freedom and liberty it provides.
The fact of the matter is, there are people out there who are not poor, not abused, but envious. These envious people were not prepared by their societies to accept modernity and they are the people that attacked us on 9/11. To quote Thomas Freidman, prominent foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, "Their grievance is rooted in psychology, not politics; their goal is to destroy America, not reform it; they can only be defeated, not negotiated with." I couldn't agree more. Anyone who denies that we have enemies as a result of jealousy is a fool. They hate us for who we are, and are willing to die for this hate. This is the principle that I have a strong desire to defeat.
I am not right wing either.
Though I support everything my country stands for, I do not agree with everything my country does. In my oppinion our system of government is by far the best currently in existence, but Americans are far from perfect.
For one, U.S. leaders have said so much about what we are not doing - fighting Islam or Arabs - that they have completely neglected to talk about what we are doing: trying to preserve Western democracy. At least that's what we should be doing.
The biggest problem with America however, is that we have in many ways turned up our noses to the restof the world. We support asshole Arab dictators so they can sell us cheap oil to fuel the big, fancy cars we want to drive. Because we want to use as much energy as we want, we tell the world they have to be with us in the war against terrorism, but we don't have to be with them in the fight against global warming. Because our presidents want more votes, they say nothing to the Israelis about what their occupation of the West Bank is doing to their potential freedom, but we readily blast Palestinians for their violence against Israelis.
Yes, there are evil, envious people out there, but there are also good people that we are pissing off with our political snobbery and hypocrisy. We can't continue to shovel billions of dollars into an anti-terrorism military campaign while simultaneously shovelling billions in oil money at the repressive dictators that support terrorism.
But what solutions really exist? Cars don't run on water but terrorists aren't hating us any less.
well, switching to E85 would be excellent to start getting our cars off gasoline (I think brazil did a while ago - the consumer there pays about 85 cents a gallon now I heard). The oil lobby doesn't really want to do this quite yet - it is most correct to think of oil companies as energy companies. Oil companies typically purchase as many alternative fuel concepts from their inventors at high prices so that they will have the rights to develop the ones they want, eventually. Of course, a lot of them are still troublesome. For example, a lot of the work being done on fuel cell cars doesn't really address the oil problem. Sure, the cars end up running on hydrogen rather than oil, but the only way that the fuel cell was charged was by burning the same or similar fossil fuels elsewhere, then transmitting that energy in the form of electricity to isolate hydrogen atoms.
(sorry, tried to do the thing I hate - simplify something complicated into a short space)
As far as your real topic here, foreign policy, I think you're partially very correct. There is a section of the world that considers the American way of life repulsive. Then again, there is a section of America that has a similar, fundamental, ignorant hatred of Islam and the Middle and Far East. Our government has found ways to work with peoples that hate us.
The key, as I see it, is to not defeat our "enemies", but instead change some elements of our foreign policy. For one thing, Western Democracy is not for everyone - it is a practice brought out of a philosophy thousands of years old, that we happen to have, but other sectors of the world do not have. While there are human rights we should respect, there are cultural differences that we should respect as well.
Sorry to speak in vagueries, but I'm not going to pretend that I know what should be done exactly - but I do think that we should all start learning about other cultures before we act against any.
Not being culturally naive is important but what too many people don't understand is that there is very little we can do diplomatically to change how hateful Muslims think. We do need to change our foreign policy, and it needs to fully support democracy and modernization in the Middle East. That means every country, not just the ones we're not paying off for oil. Our foreign policy should also continue to be against terrorism, but not the half-assed way Bush is going about it. The rest of the huge amounts of reform that are needed in the Middle East need to come from within. They need to get their heads out of their asses and start embracing modernity. India is a good example, though their Muslim population is only a minority.
I think the thing that is wrong is that the US tries to solve everyone else's problems instead of focusing on our own. You suggessted it would be best to modernize other countries like ours. I don't think we should do that unless they are willing to do it; I think this country is stepping on other's toes, at times, and that's what they don't like.
There are "hateful" people all over the world, and a huge portion of the world (not just the oft targeted Muslim community) that despises America.
However, I still don't think that democracy is an easy concept to instill in an adult population. The responsibility of a government and an education system is to socialize the youth. From the first days of our public education we're taught to accept democracy and shun all other forms of government. In a real historic lens we can see that democracy is not the natural form of government a people creates -- indeed, that it's not the form of government the masses even innately seem to want.
This doesn't mean that it isn't both right and good - but instead points to the need to teach democracy at an early age. The evolution of representative democracy in the US even was long and arduous, and hugely pushed by protestant church government. Without that kind of cultural background, there isn't the same impetus for democracy.
Anyhow, I don't see how modernizing an enemy is the key to making them less of a threat - a huge portion of the 20th century was spent in a cold war because those who we ideologically despised were technologically advanced. Ask any member of the previous generations how terrifying life could be then. They weren't worried about one or two buildings being destroyed, but by global thermonuclear war destroying every life on the planet.
I still think that the problem isn't Islam, not even radical Islam. Radical Islamics have not chosen the United States at random - they have chosen us to target because we are a symbol of things they hate. And again, I only have a surface understanding of this.
If what you are saying the third world should embrace is consumer culture, big business, sex driven media, and other trademarks of western life, you might find that there are plenty of people, not just in the third world, that would do nearly anything to try and stop that movement.