Reasoned Thought
First up, this rather rational column by Thomas Friedman of the NYTimes from last Thursday, responding to the 7/7 attacks in London. Here are my key takeaways:

The more Western societies - particularly the big European societies, which have much larger Muslim populations than America - look on their own Muslims with suspicion, the more internal tensions this creates, and the more alienated their already alienated Muslim youth become. This is exactly what Osama bin Laden dreamed of with 9/11: to create a great gulf between the Muslim world and the globalizing West. ...it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village. What do I mean? I mean that the greatest restraint on human behavior is never a policeman or a border guard. The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed. Many people said Palestinian suicide bombing was the spontaneous reaction of frustrated Palestinian youth. But when Palestinians decided that it was in their interest to have a cease-fire with Israel, those bombings stopped cold. The village said enough was enough. The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden. Some Muslim leaders have taken up this challenge. This past week in Jordan, King Abdullah II hosted an impressive conference in Amman for moderate Muslim thinkers and clerics who want to take back their faith from those who have tried to hijack it. But this has to go further and wider.

You can say that perhaps this is a somewhat simplistic take on the whole problem, but I would agree with Friedman and argue that this is exactly the tenor and tone that needs to be used to address the spiraling, virus-like Al Qaeda problem. We've tried bombs and invasions, and while that worked with a specific and credible target (Afghanistan), it hasn't worked so well with Iraq, where all our rationales seem to be floating away down the Euphrates. It's time for Muslim moderates to step forward, and it's time for the US, Britain, and other nations to help bring those voices to the fore.

I took a circuitous path to this Friedman editorial. I was pointed to it via a link from the rightist wing-nut site, Free Republic, after viewing a post by Jesus' General in which he compared reasoned condemnations of the London attacks by Islamic governmental and clerical leaders with comments posted by readers of various right-wing blogs. I decided to check out one of the FreeRepublic posts, to see if the sampling was too heavy handed. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Here's my collection of the commentary:

If it's a Muslim problem, it needs a nuclear solution. --by mikegi ******* The "muslim solution" I envision is that each year we eliminate 10% of the 2005 muslim population from the face of the earth. We keep repeating this until muslim terrror attacks stop. Since there will be some forces working to increase the muslim population I suspect that it will take less than 11 years to achieve victory. --by CurlyDave ******* The Muslim world needs to believe one thing..... That is the fact - that if WE have to solve the "problem" for them --- MILLIONS will die in an instant. Semper Fi --by river rat (You may turn the other cheek, but I prefer to look into my enemy's vacant dead eyes.) ******* He says twice that there is "no obvious target to retaliate against", but I disagree. I think Mecca is a very obvious target, and perfectly appropriate. --by thoughtomator (The legislative process is like the digestive process, same end product) ******* *The* answer is our ACM's and B83's. That's the only thing that'll save us. --by LAURENTIJ [ed. note: a B83 is a nuclear bomb]

To be fair, it wasn't all frothing at the mouth--there was this comment:

I hate to say this but he's only about half wrong. The bombings are a sucker-punch intended to provoke us into over-reaction. We can't let them define the terms. --by tsomer