120mm - The major conflict issue in the Indian Wars is missing. The West is not attempting to physically conquer and destroy the Islamic world as it was the Western tribes. AQ believes this to be the case, but other than in the Palestinian territories the Muslim world generally doesn't buy AQ's case yet. Indeed, the No. 1 IO mission is to ensure that this remains the case. No. 2 IO mission is to convince the wider Muslim world that AQ is not the defender of oppressed Muslims but rather the Islamic Jacobin radicals that they really are. We are, I believe, far away from accomplishing this feat and getting further away every day.

Unfortunately the problem with IO nowadays is that it is near impossible to control the media environment, especially with regards to a wider global population. In the U.S. case control is not even an option --- simply gaining entry to the necessary media markets is a problem. At some basic level policy changes will have to be made in order to have an effect --- a better form of BS is not going to do a damn thing.

Goesh - I have yet to encounter any Islamic text which asserts that personal income tax is illegal. Are you referring to interest on savings?

Regarding women's rights and democracy, I point you to Western culture's rather recent conversion to the same. The West had democracy far before it had any concern for women's property rights. The Napoleonic legal code in Egypt actually removed the property rights for women they had previously held under sharia law. Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia headline culturally Islamic countries where women have held the presidency or prime minister's chair, which has never occurred in the U.S. Japan and Korea, are textbook examples of how a country can achieve modernity and democracy while at the same denying women equality in the cultural and economic spheres.