Here's my take on it - and it is not the moral high ground - it is solving the problem.
Ten years ago the primary problem we had with Muslims was Israel and Palestine after each others throats. But, in general, I suppose their was an element that did not like Bush senior's Gulf War I, but the run-of-the-mill Muslim regarded the US as an economic powerhouse and a country to be admired. I was in some Muslim countries and they liked the trinkets I brought from America, like tee-shirts, etc.
Now, they look at the whole situation and can see only America as an aggressor. They watch the US go into Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Afghanistan again, then Pakistan, now Libya. In the meantime, the Israel is looking like a big bully to the group of people called Palestinians. People remember when the US - or its allies - kills someone that you can relate to as a brother.
So now you have pretty much the whole Muslim world hating us. I talked to a man from Pakistan a week ago (before OBL killing) and he said all of Pakistan hates us. How can we turn that around? The answer seems pretty clear to me... get the hell out of there. Killing Osama bin Ladin was the last piece of unfinished business we have in that area. Let us stop our enthusiasm for bring democracy to the Muslim world, and let's not try to "stabilize" Afghanistan and let them do whatever they have done for the past thousand years. Same thing with Libya and Iran.
They all can't be the deadly enemies that the press would make them out to be. We have got a pretty comprehensive underground spy operation to keep up with people like bin Laden's predecessor. We can let our very capable intelligence gathering agencies do their job - and get our guns, airplanes and soldiers out of there.
We have got to settle this feud with the Muslims of the world. We are a strong enough country and secure in our borders to take the first step.
Now that we have show the world how tough we are, let's show them that we also can be rational. We've got to recognize that our attempts to stop terrorism is really making the problem worse. That is the heart of the problem. Our attempts at making the US a little bit more secure - is actually making us a lot more unsafe.
