He started it!

I agree with a lot of this opinion piece overall; Obama's immediate attempt to reach out to the Muslim and Arab communities around the world is a good thing, and there's still lots of work to be done in stabilizing the middle east. He also gets bonus points for mentioning that much of the instability is a direct effect of Western imperialism, which is undeniably true.

But there's also this:

Let's be clear: Americans did not initiate the conflict with al-Qaeda and other Muslim extremists, and Americans will not be the ones to declare an end to the struggle against violent extremism practiced in the name of jihad.

That is a task that falls to Muslims themselves. At its core, this struggle is over the future of Islam. Obama must work hard to make sure that his well-intentioned gestures of comity do not obscure this reality -- and do not provoke a new whiplash of resentment and doubt if they do not bring the results he wants.

Which to me just reeks of "Yeah, but he started it!"

At this point it doesn't matter who initiated the conflict - though I do think that there's far more debate there than is often acknowledged (see above re: western imperialism) - because it doesn't fall to either 'side' to stop it. It falls to both. In order to find peace, all involved parties need to find a tolerable compromise. Fights end when either one opponent is incapacitated - which no moderately sane person can possibly advocate in a large-scale ideological conflict like this - or when they both agree to stop shooting at each other, sit down, and figure out a way to continue to get along without shooting at each other.

An agreement of peace needs to have more than one signature on it, and you can't point fingers saying that it's up to one side or the other to write it. It needs to be a joint project.