Bring them home, bring them home now

I've watched the rioting and murders in Afghanistan over the weekend with a sense of finality.

We've spent our time, blood, and treasure in Dar Al Islam for the entire breadth of my life.  We've tried to broker peace deals between mostly democratic Israel and the countries around it, with most of them not being worth the paper they were printed on.  We've propped up more than a few dictators who took our money and used it to build militaries to fight us and support those who would strike us in our homes.  We've overthrown despotic, barbaric regimes in two countries in exchange for a decade of watching our sons and daughters come home in coffins.  We've tried to accomodate a backwards code of conduct that would make Attilla the Hun proud.  Now, supposedly because some fundamentalist Christian jerk-off in Florida decided to gain a little of the attention that mommy and daddy denied him by burning a Koran, innocent people who went to Afghanistan to provide support and help to the Afghani people have been murdered in the streets.

Why have we not only taken these attacks, but apologized for being a big target?  One word:  Tribute.

We are paying tribute in blood, treasure, and recognition to the Islamic world because we are afraid that they will shut off the oil.  Just as the Barbary Pirates demanded payment in exchange for passage in the Mediterranean, the denizens of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia are squeezing us for everything we'll pay.  "Millions for defense, not a cent in tribute!" was the slogan of our country in 1800.  We need to rediscover our backbone and tell the barbarians of Dar Al Islam to get bent.

All support for Islamic countries and movements needs to end, military, political, or economic.  If the house of Al Saud or the princes of the Persian Gulf cannot fend for themselves, then they don't deserve to be in power.  The denizens of Iraq and Afghanistan will never stop living on their knees, so we need to stop trying to force them to stand up.  We need to stop buying oil from the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and Central Asia, and make up the difference with increased energy efficiency, additional domestic energy production, and exploiting our trade relationships with friendly countries in our own hemisphere.  Nationals of Islamic countries that have supported our enemies need to be shown the door and sent home.  If a citizen of the United States provides aid and comfort  to one of these barbaric regimes in any way, they need to be prosecuted as agents of an unfriendly foreign power.

Contact with non-democratic regimes in the Islamic area of the world should be cut down to an absolute minimum.  Containment along the lines of the Truman Doctrine should be our goal.   Defense pacts with countries that express democracy as their goal and actually make progress towards modernization and liberalization should be made so that the refugees from the 12th century don't destroy those who want to join civilization.  However, we should make it clear that we will not prop up every two-bit generalissimo who spouts the right platitudes while lining his own pockets and killing his people.  We should make it clear to Iran, Syria, and the rest of the Islamic world that any attack against us or our allies will be answered with immediate and overwhelming force.   We're a peaceful people, but if you raise a hand to us, we will take off your arm.

I am sick and tired of watching those who want to help the Islamic world get kicked in the teeth just prior to being beheaded.  We need to isolate these barbarians from our civilization and wait for them to rot from the inside as we did with the Soviet Union.  No amount of our blood, toil, or treasure is going to reverse 1000 years of barbarism, and we should stop trying to fill the bottomless pit that is the Dar Al Islam.