You left out the first paragraph of your post on Flame, which is, ironically, the one that I can usefully address on Current Events:

Negotiating with people who just killed 3000 americans? That raises my hackles. I don't think its an option. When you negotiate with terrorists you show the terrorists they have a legitemite bargaining tool. Want something? Kill another 3000 americans.

I devoted a paragraph to trying to prevent that misunderstanding, but upon reflection I it's useful to expand on that thought.

I was in no way recommending negotiation. I'm advocating strengthening our strategy with a more refined understanding of the enemy.

That doesn't preclude responding to ObL's litany of complaints with strategic intent. Now that I think about it, the United States has never directly responded to ObL's formal manifesto; we've never denied the charges. That could be seen as tacit agreement in some quarters, but more importantly, it suggests that we don't have a good answer, which highlights a weakness in our rhetorical arsenal (never forget that this war is being fought on many levels). It hampers our effort to take the moral high ground and win hearts and minds, etc.

What if we, in fact, wipe the word "negotiate" completely from our vocabularies. Indeed, never negotiate with terrorists, we know the danger (and by rights I should be insulted that you thought I didn't). But we can respond, and cut off ObL's rhetorical legs. For example, if we can become independent of Middle Eastern oil (my preferred easy place to start), we serve our own interests in many ways, and nullify one of their complaints and undermine the several related economic complaints. We just tell the world we're finally going to get smart about oil. That's something so intrinsically smart that the world's been wondering for a long time what we're waitng for; and so smart that the enemy would be hard pressed to portray it as a concession. They lose, we win.

Not to mention that we neatly reverse the economic power relationship. They demonstrate all the time to us how much we need their oil; just for a change, let's demonstrate to them how much they need the dollars we trade for the oil. We could destroy the economic base of the Middle East in a heartbeat if we chose to do so.

Not that I invented this strategy. It's been around so long and never been implemented that I'd assume that the government never will grow sufficient spine to challenge the oil companies on this point. But a while back I got one of those circulating emails advocating a grass-roots strategy for petroleum-independence. It begins with a long rant, but the heart of the message is this data (which should be taken with a grain of salt until verified; reproduced here just to illustrate the concept).

Importation of Middle Eastern oil by company:

Shell............................. 205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco..................... 144,332,000 barrels
Exxon /Mobil................. 130,082,000 barrels
Marathon/Speedway.............. 117,740,000 barrels
Amoco..............................62,231,000 barrels

Citgo.......................0 barrels
Sunoco...................0 barrels
Conoco...................0 barrels
Sinclair....................0 barrels
BP/Phillips...............0 barrels
Hess........................0 barrels
ARC0......................0 barrels

You see the tactic right away: Boycott gas stations whose owners import oil from the Middle East. Take our business to companies that use domestic oil or oil from non-Middle-Eastern sources.

Would it cost us? Sure would. Using oil from a smaller pool of reserves will increase the price. But if you step back and look at the big picture, each of us is already paying a hidden tax on gasoline to pay for the cost of doing business in the Middle East: Foreign aid to prop up friendly governments, not to mention the hundreds of billions in direct costs in Iraq, and general national security focus on the ME. Reducing the future cost of doing business in the Middle East can offset higher gas prices, albeit not in a way that's easily visible. (But, if there's any truth to conservative free-market theory, we must have faith that the savings will find a path to trickle down upon our heads.)

(Given the local choice, I'm pleased to see that most frequent gas station is Amoco, zero ME content. But Shell is my second-most-frequent, and they've gotta go. No skin off my nose--what a delightfully easy way to make a difference in this conflict!)

I kinda got here by chance, as the "hook" I originally used just for illustration--oil--turned into an actual thesis. There are many other threads sticking out of the ball of string that we could try pulling on. I'd hold up this one as an illustration of my objective: Let's see if we can think of workable answers, the ones that serve American interersts (and by extension the way it oughta be, those of Western Civilization in general), that don't require paying a price in honor and whose material cost/benefit ratio is in our favor. And it illustrates the potential usefulness of finding a way around simplicistic government propaganda and going to the source, finding there something on which I could get some traction and at least develop a solution to propose. You can't get here from "they're jes' plain crazy!".