The most important thing the United States can do to solve the problem in Afghanistan is publicly support a South Africa style, one person one vote resolution to the Palestinian conflict over Zionism.
Until that happens, the United States will be in a legitimate conflict with the Muslim world. Not a PR conflict or a misunderstanding or propaganda conflict but a real conflict in which Muslims, in self defense, will attack the US from somewhere, if not Afghanistan, then Arabia, if not, then Sudan, if not then Muslim communities in the West.
There are over 100 million Muslims living under pro-US dictatorships in Jordan, Egypt the West Bank and Saudi Arabia - where the US supports and is publicly tied to the denial of people's rights to participate in their own politics because democracies in these countries would be dangerous to Israel keeping its Jewish majority.
There are nearly 100 million Muslims that have anti-Zionist leaderships, in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza where the people are punished for living under anti-Zionist rule, whether elected or not, by sanctions that cruelly harm the populations and leave the leaderships intact.
I don't think much need be added about the suffering of the 25 or so million Iraqis who committed the crime of being ruled by the anti-Zionist Saddam Hussein.
The idea that over 200 million Muslim people should suffer so 6 million Jews in Israel can have a Jewish majority state leads to conflict between the West and the Muslim world and there is no way around that.
Americans have been slow to understand that this is a real conflict. This is not a matter of George Bush using more aggressive language than Barack Obama. The United States is, with most Americans not fully aware, gravely harming large numbers of Muslims continuously for the purpose of keeping the region safe for a Jewish state.
Stop supporting Zionism and Al-Qaeda and the Muslim world will no longer be in conflict with the US and the West.
That can and should be done in a way that respects the religious, personal and property rights of those Jews living in the region.
Once that's done, Muslim grievances against the US will dissipate steadily and whether Bin Laden is caught or not, the lack of anger, which is now justified, that fuels his recruits will render the conflict he believes he's fighting irrelevant.
But giving the Palestinians Bantustans worse than those the Blacks of South Africa rejected, even if the Palestinians can be starved into accepting them, will not end or even decrease the conflict.
The alternative to US support for one state is decades of conflict that will just become more expensive in terms of money and lives and will hasten the decline of the US as a superpower.
