Mike,

I'm currently listening to Friedman's "Flat Hot and Crowded" (may be in a different order...). He lays down some great insights as to governance in countries that suck their money out of the ground. How good governance declines as oil revenues increase; or parallel to that thought that as a play on the American battle cry of "No taxation without representation" that in countries that do not have to tax their populaces it comes out more as "No taxation, so no representation."

As a forcing function to get to right and greater stability in the Middle East through governments that HAVE to be more open to the needs of their populaces; and a Middle East that the US is engaging through the highly clouded decision making process of an addict engaging his dealer; we must first dedicate our national energy to inventing and developing the next generation of energy.

Friedman describes energy as "Energy from Hell" (comes out of the Earth) vs. "Energy from Heaven" (comes from the sky). He gets a little too uber-green for my tastes at times, but his observations on governance in the Middle East and the impact of US energy policy at home on our foreign policy and and national security are insightful.

The Saudis are the worst offenders of the lot; and number one on the AQ hit parade for their association with the U.S. The al Saud family may be the best of bad options for governance there, but we need to change the nature of our relationship. We cannot simply embrace as partners in GWOT the Saudi and Lybian governments, who then in turn use that as a license to put the smack down on subversive nationalist movements seeking reasonable governmental reforms, or like the recent smack down the Saudis put on those Yemenes Shias. No good can come to America from validating such behavior.

Three key legs of the AQ platform are:
1. Remove Western Presence
2. Abolish Apostate Governments
3. Unite the Ummah

I think the U.S. should co-opt all three legs of that platform, but do so in a way that promotes Self-Determination and Freedom rather than the Stone Age version of Islam AQ is peddling.

There should be less overt Western influence over Middle Eastern Governance, and we should lead the effort to roll back the controls emplaced through colonialism and Cold War manipulations.

"Apostate" or more appropriately from our perspective, governments that draw too much of their legitimacy from foregin powers need to be brought into the embrace of legitimacy more widely recognized and accepted by the populaces they serve.

As to the Ummah, what does the West have to fear from an EU-like organization of Muslim states? We have far more to fear from the Muslim populaces who perceive they are being denied by the West the ability to seek such local collaboration. The Caliphate as the intel guys spin it to be is pure fanatsy. The old ones were built by conquest and held together at swordpoint. It just won't happen. But a political organization such as the EU is not only reasonable, but logical.

Look at the fear mongering that went on in the 50s and 60s over Communism. Seems silly now. It was never about the ideology, and far more about populaces seeking governments free of external controls; it was just our competition with the Soviets that muddied the waters. We don't need to go head to head with AQ by taking polar opposite positions; instead we simply steal their platform and and re-tune our engagement with the region to be more appropriate for 2010 rather than 1950. I think Ike would agree.