US versus China, bad idea; US versus Islam, bad idea

There's an estimated more than 1 billion Muslims in the world. It's behind Christianity at around 1.7 billion. Just as in the old days, the US thought it was wise not to piss off the Chinese who had a 1 billion population, it seems the Americans might have dealt with Muslims the same way.

Still, there's a lot not to like about the Muslim faith. In extreme incarnations, they persecute women and kill homosexuals. Iran recently hanged two homosexual youths. They seem inclined to resort to violence to resolve problems including promoting the idea that suicide bombers/killers of 'infidels' will go to heaven. (Another reason it's a Islamist's duty to have a lot of children, and yet another example of war by population. It's very practical that suicide bombers are typically young folks. You don't want people you've invested in greatly -- older wiser people -- blowing themselves up. And by the way, what a nice way to get rid of that black sheep who never listened to you anyway?) By contrast, Christianity most successfully spread because of more gentle persuasion tactics (okay, well at least we've forgotten about how violent they might have been). Islam today is just not a very tolerant religion it seems. Buddists and Christians are saints by comparison.

There is a lot not to like about Chinese government policies including censorship, although by constrast the Chinese seem a lot more humane.

Still, it seems like it would be have been wise to use the same methods that we used on China to deal with Muslim countries. In China's case, we pointed out human rights violations. We told China we would defend the Taiwanese democracy. But essentially we waited for the liberalism of capitalism to take hold. Maybe we would have philosophically liked the communist dictatorship to fall, too, but that would have been very destabilizing and unpredictable.

Now Afghanistan seems a bit more clear cut case where military force was needed. However, it seems to me that Iraq might have been treated the same way as China. It does seem that Saddam (and his likely successor sons) were more corrupt and stupid than the Chinese politicos. But we still had lots of time -- probably years -- before the US absolutely needed to do anything in Iraq specifically and independently. (Probably the UN could have dealt with instability at the time of Saddam's eventual death?)

One might ask, but what about this general hatred of the US being fomented in Muslim countries by Al Qaeda. We need to somehow prevent terrorism from spreading. It seems to me possible that quiet prevention of terrorist activity might be more effective than the more direct attack -- but in the wrong country -- that we are conducting now. The US is a rich country, it could do a lot through financial rewards to convince people to be our friends and the right kind of friends. The ones who try to minimize radical pan-Islamic teachings. The ones who liberalize their religions to be more inclusive and tolerant. Maybe the US should've given money to the more peaceful Fatah in Palestine. But by giving attention to the terrorists and raising stakes by getting directly involved, we are becoming a great marketing machine for the 'successes' of radical Islam.
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As a side note, the US military put too much stake in "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" argument in invading Iraq. One might have thought we should have garnered significant Shiite good will around the world, including in Iran, by toppling Sunni dictator and oppressor Saddam. But clearly this has not happened. The more radical Shiites have made their position clear that unless we renounce our allegiance to Israel, they still don't consider us their friends. And probably there's some natural feeling that they could have taken care of their own affairs. And besides it seems only 'true' Moslim countries can be friends of such countries.