[JohnW]

Is there actually a way to "get it right?" I think not. However, I'll tell you what I would do if I was president.

First off, I would pull all the troops back home and let all the middle eastern factions do what the hell they wanted to each other. That would be their problem. Maybe they would be so busy fighting and worrying about each other that they wouldn't have time to f@ck about with us.

In the meantime, technology is the answer for the western world. The first thing is to find alternative energy sources ensuring that the west has an abundance of whatever the sources are. Then we can stop buying their bloody overpriced oil and they will have little or no revenue to build nuclear bombs. However, presuming that some other countries continue to buy their oil and they do become nuclear powers, we need to develop our defense technologies to counteract whatever they can produce. We need to concentrate our efforts on home defences and surveilance of terrorist activities as it relates to our own two countries. Let the rest of the world look after their own problems. This way, of course, we will be accused of being insular and not caring about the rest of the world. Oh well.........it seems that whatever we do, we get accused of something.