I meant to address this point earlier when I talked about the use of soft power vs. hard power but I had rambled on enough already by that time.
In any event, this is where you're mistaken. One has to talk to others in a language they understand. Having had a lot of Muslim friends from all over the world for many years, I feel confident in saying that Muslims in general, and M.E.sterners in particular have a much more accute sense of history than we as Americans do. So for example if you talk to Iranians, they tend to have a great deal of pride in their Persian past, as well as their Islamic past and will talk of it frequently as a point of pride and the subjugation under western colonial powers as a source of shame and vindictiveness...even now, after all these years/centuries. Ditto that for the Turks, Arabs, N. Africans, etc.
Therefore, in effect saying the following to the M.E. and Muslim world does in fact make good sense. "Look, we understand what you've contributed to the history of science. How about you start taking the steps on the road that really will return you to a similar level of prominance instead of blowing up innocent people, which will not do so."
If throwing them a bone or two this way in the space program, among others, starts some in the Muslim/M.E. world to start questioning the narrative I mentioned earlier, isn't it worth it? After all, the Arabs have been intent on regaining past glory through the use of socialism, Pan Arabism, and other movements. None of them have delivered. As with these other movements, eventually they'll realize that Islamic fundamentalism won't either. When that happens, having a counter narrative for them to fall back to that allows them to look inward for the source of some/most of their problems rather than outward will be a good thing for us...and them. Ultimately, I don't think that's any different than the way we used soft power to confront the Soviets during the cold war. Again, it's about using a combination of approaches.
IMHO, this view of and focus on past glory by the Jihadists is in many ways the key to unraveling the narrative that provides popular support for and drives the fundie agenda. Part of that narrative is that they want to regain the past glory of the Islamic Empire. The problem with their line of reasoning is that if one truly examines political and religious Islam as practiced during that era, it was much more tolerant than what the Islamofascists are now pushing, i.e. Wahhabism. Moreover, in most cases much of their ideology and terrorist tactics are not supported by Islamic jurisprudence.
Unfortunately, there's another structural problem that makes the use of either hard or soft U.S. power problematic with the M.E, the way it was carved up in the post colonial era. In many cases, tribes and ethnic groups were split up for political or economic reasons of the west resulting in countries that are inherently unstable. Iraq with its mixture off Shia, Sunni and Kurds is a good example. So if we encourage the leaders of these countries to be less despotic, then there's a good chance those countries become unstable and spiral out of control. OTOH, if we continue to back dictators, we'll continue to be seen as evil and hypocritcal by the M.E. "street". To that conundrum, I have no answer.
Weeelllll, maybe one, but that's for another time and thread.
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