But the Iranians are surrounded by a sea of Sunnis who hate them. And if you look on the map, you can see that they're also surrounded by a bunch of American bases that certainly could hit them at any moment. The idea that the Iranians are a threat to the United States is absurd really. How are they going to hurt the United States of America? Unless we attack them first and then they use terrorism inside America.

Our leaders continue to say that we're making strong headway against this problem. And I think we are not.

We have not destroyed al Qaeda, so we still have that to worry about. We have its traditional allies, the Kashmiri groups, the groups that are operating now in Iraq, and now we have a third tier of threat amongst the Muslims that live in the West and who are inspired to do something against the West by the example of the other two tiers.

I've said before: If Osama bin Laden was a Christian, Iraq was the Christmas present he always wanted but never expected his parents to give. It validated for the Muslim world virtually all of bin Laden's rhetoric. He had always said the Americans will destroy any strong Muslim regime, and we did.

Just as some of the most ardent political ideologues in the West are young people, revolutionaries, the '60s generation, - in Islam some of the most religious people are the youngsters. But more important than that, the prophet - in his writings, in his traditions - and the Koran itself say that the Muslim youth are the ones whom the future depends on and that it's up to them to do the fighting.

So in a sense, that little war in the Levant had a horrendous effect in terms of the stability of countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, over the long term. Because once again, it proved to Muslims that their governments couldn't protect them and would side with the enemy.

So what we have is an American foreign policy that is inextricably linked to domestic matters. It is very dangerous for a politician who desires nothing more than to stay in office to address the mindset that any change in policy is appeasement. And Americans will accept that for a certain amount of time.