Towards the end of 2006, the US faced what was basically a broad and disparate insurgency across huge parts of the Muslim world. The relentless application of US military force is not only failing to solve the problem but exacerbating it. It will take at least a generation before an entire cadre of young Muslims begin to moderate their bitterness and intense dislike of the US, from watching the brutality of multiple military conflicts live on television. As a result the Muslim identity—Muslimness—in most cases today trumps all other identities: ethnic, sectarian, professional, class. This is an abnormal situation, even for Muslims for whom Islam normally forms only a part of their personal identity, along with other elements. Yet the salience of the Muslim identity is intensified by war, conflict and the image of Muslims under siege everywhere.

What needs to be done? At this point radical circumstances require radical responses. What is most essential is that the super-charged atmosphere of the Muslim World be allowed to calm down, to depressurize and gradually normalize, to give room to moderates and the political process once again, to allow alternate identities to re-enter the normal process of political and social life.

Only some combination of the following conditions will diminish the threat of terrorism and permit the Muslim World to return to a state in which armed struggle, insurgency, civil war, large-scale political violence, super-charged Islamic rhetoric, and a dominating focus on the state of the ummah recede from daily discourse and behavior.

It will be necessary to withdraw virtually all US military forces from Muslim soil where they represent a provocative element and source of anger. US troops are a lightning rod for terrorism. (Let’s not forget that it was US troops on Saudi soil, unwelcome to the population that lent Bin Ladin his first cause in his early manifestos against the US in the early 1990s.) The US should also return counter-terrorism to the arena of intelligence and police work—where it has always belonged. The military instrument is by definition crude, ultimately ineffectual, and creates enemies faster than we can eliminate them.

The US experiment in exercising global hegemony, unipolarism, and American exceptionalism must come to an end. Most of the world hates a hegemonic imperial power; most of the world prefers a multi-polar world that provides checks, balances, and options to all. Of course the US cannot divest itself of its power, but it might find that power, consultation, and responsibilities shared with other major world states on a more collegial basis better serves US interests. “Policemen of the world” generally end up policing only those neighborhoods and communities that serve their own parochial interests, thereby diminishing any claim to “disinterested service.”

The US must help foster institutions and international forums of cooperation that restore respect for law and international norms that have been increasingly weakened since the end of the Cold War. If the US could spend just one-quarter of the funds squandered counterproductively on the war in Iraq—variously calculated at some $800 billion—on the building of hospitals, universities, schools, clinics and training programs across the Muslim world instead, think how the image and role of the US might change. By any standards it is a bargain—and ethically right. Muslim students should also be re-invited en masse to the US for higher education. Historically this has been a key source of positive Muslim impressions of the US.

The US needs to permit other nations and institutions to assume equal or greater partnership in working political problems in the Middle East. In particular the US has lost any cachet of objectivity as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian problem: Let the UN, EU, Russia, and other forces press for an urgent solution. The outlines of a final settlement are in any case well-known to all.

American society desperately needs access to broader media coverage of global events. We live in an isolated and self-censoring society that cuts us off from reality—a deadly luxury for a superpower. We need alternative perspectives to enhance debate: let CNN International, not its tame domestic version, be available in the US; we need the real BBC and also al-Jazeera/ English, and Indian, Russian and Chinese news coverage—all in English. We can only benefit from broader perspectives that represent how most of the rest of the world thinks. Hard-liners in Washington may argue that “we create our own reality” but foreign acceptance of that reality has been limited in the extreme.

In brief, the state of affairs between the West, especially the US, and the Muslim World is dire. It is being worsened daily. We need a radical reconsideration of the most basic propositions of the use of American power if we are to avoid even more cataclysmic confrontation with the Muslim World—in which we will be increasingly standing alone.