A few years ago a famous pop artist wore a T-shirt at an awards show that read: The best policy is to have no enemies. Today we have enemies -- people who are willing, able and literally dying to kill us. So how do we change that? Obviously, we can't please everyone. The French don't like us much, but they aren't killing us, so I'll concentrate on the militant Muslims. If we cannot fix these guys, a fact that is becoming apparent in Iraq, maybe we can fix ourselves.

The very first stumbling block to winning the love of Islamic-extremists is our First Amendment. To the militant Muslim, freedom of speech leads to blasphemy, heresy, hedonism and dangerous liberal ideas. I suppose we could modify this freedom to exclude topics such as religion, politics and government. Of course there would have to be a severe purging -- a cleansing so to speak -- of the modern media (those working in television, magazines and newspapers). No doubt we'd have to pull the plug on the Internet, but getting rid of computers shouldn't be a problem for a world returning to the 7 th Century.

Freedom of religion? We'd have to ban Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism and all the other false religions. The First Amendment would need to be amended to make Islam the national religion. Would there be repercussions? Will the Buddhists start blowing up supermarkets? No way. The Jews? They'll just leave. Christians will have to head south to Mexico or South America (quite an ironic reversal of fortune). God help the Atheists.

Our legal system would have to be modified, pretty much ending the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as we know them. They were always such a drag on law enforcement anyway. It will be a lot easier to punish law-breakers if we don't have to worry about illegal search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment, and the rights of the accused. We also get way cool public punishments like beheadings, cutting out tongues and cutting off fingers and limbs. Now there are some deterrents to crime.

If we're going to win the hearts and minds of Al Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas and the like, we have to put women back in their place. Perhaps we should adopt some of these groups' cultural values where women are not allowed to speak with men outside their families, or drive cars, must remain completely covered from head to toe in public, and may be executed for adultery or shaming their families.

Should we continue to buy oil from the Middle East? Absolutely. Oil sales pump trillions of Western dollars into countries sponsoring terror groups. How could the average Islamic-Fascist not like that? We provide them with funds for buying weapons and influence around the globe. Oil is funding the Jihad. If we want to keep them happy, keep pumping the gas.

Our military spent most of the 90s protecting Muslim lives. We tried to protect the Somalis from tyrannical warlords, the Bosnians from the Christians and, of course, the Kuwaitis and Saudis from the more-fascist-than-Muslim regime of Saddam Hussein. When Chechen Muslims were committing terrorist acts of rebellion against the Russians, we pressured Moscow for moderation and tolerance. In return for these efforts two United States embassies in Africa were blown up, the USS Cole was attacked, the Khobar Towers barracks was bombed and the World Trade Center was attacked once in 1993 then again in 2001. It seems protecting innocent, oppressed Muslims does not make the militant Islamic-extremists like us any better. That seems to be a lesson we are learning again in Iraq.

We support the nation of Israel; an industrious, peace-loving representative republic; a nation that has been attacked by its Arab neighbors over and over again since its inception in 1948. Jerusalem is a holy site for both Jews and Muslims, and both can be found worshipping in their respective ways within yards of each other. Doesn't matter. To gain Bin Laden's friendship we drop Israel like a hot potato.

Finally, let's face it. The liberal, sex, drugs and rock and roll society that we've become and laugh at when portrayed on television comedies, is a fundamental cause of their hatred for us -- far more than our military might, which they fear and respect. They view our permissive culture as poison to Islamic society. It is viewed as a virus invading their bodies and destroying their souls. We can joke about the pot smoked in high school or the sexual conquests made in college, but to our enemies these are nails in the coffin of the Great Satan. I guess we just start saying no to everything.

I'm sure most Americans reading this sense my sarcasm -- the total impossibility of transforming the United States of America into the Islamic Republic of America. We would have to abandon our ideals, our freedoms, all that it means to be American. The great irony is that many militant Muslims reading this wouldn't recognize the sarcasm at all. To them it would be a simple prescription for fixing America, or at least a good start -- a start to a process they mean to see completed at some point in the future. We might ask ourselves one question. If we know Islamic-extremists can't change our beliefs, ideals and principles, and they know we cannot change theirs, just what is the end game in this conflict?