Conventional wisdom has held for some time now that Muslims in the United States integrate better into society than do Muslims in France, Britain or other European countries, and that's why we haven't had many homegrown terrorist plots. But perhaps in light of recent events, that is just so much self-delusion. Some 20 Somali-Americans -- all young men mostly born here, the FBI says -- have gone to Somalia in the past 18 months and joined Al Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated group trying to seize that Horn of Africa country. One of those Somali Americans, Shirwa Ahmed, died in an apparent suicide attack targeting government offices in northern Somalia in October 2008. Najibullah Zazi, an American born in Afghanistan but raised in the United States since the age of 7, was plotting to blow up trains in New York City before he was recently arrested in Colorado. And now Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, an American Muslim born and raised in Virginia, stands accused of shooting to death 13 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas.

Are we as good at integrating Muslims into U.S. society as we think we are? Or is it that Muslims worldwide are inevitably getting fed up with America's two wars against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a global war on terror that is perceived to be attacking Muslims in about two dozen countries? Or is it that Al Qaeda -- which had connections to Zazi, Al Shabaab and the Somalis, and perhaps through a cleric to Maj. Hasan -- is still the force we need first to be reckoning with?

How should the Obama administration broaden its counterterrorism strategy to include these burgeoning terrorist havens? Should it increase the use of Predator drones in these countries? Or the kind of commando raids that killed a key Al Shabaab leader in Somalia recently? Should the president consider lifting the ban on assassinations in order to more freely target terrorist figures in countries where we're not at war? And what are the options the president has for focusing on the "upstream" factors, as his chief counterterrorism adviser has called them, that lead people to commit terrorist acts in the first place?

In any case, how should Washington try to manage the Sino-American relationship -- the political as well as the economic dimension? Given the global rise of China, was President Obama right, for example, recently to postpone a meeting in Washington with the Dalai Lama -- until after a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao? Or did this step express too much deference towards a China that still has a long way to go before rivaling the U.S. in global influence?

Clinton has taken charge of relations with great powers China and Russia, and is a key player in reinforcing Obama's multilateral approach to international issues, one of the things that the Nobel committee cited in giving him the Peace Prize. People give her credit for giving this administration some spine. And she certainly is getting more resources for the State Department. David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote a piece in the Washington Post in August saying that Clinton is "rethinking the very nature of diplomacy and translating that vision into a revitalized State Department, one that approaches U.S. allies and rivals in ways that challenge long-held traditions."

But we would like to know what you, the experts, think about Hillary's performance so far, what she has accomplished, and what more she could or should be doing. So what kind of report card do you give Hillary Rodham Clinton so far as secretary of State? Was she a good, or bad, choice as the nation's top diplomat?

Are those fears well-founded? Given a level of popular opposition to the theocratic regime that surprised many outside observers, especially on the part of the country's urban youth, is there a viable prospect that the regime can be swept from power by a people's revolution? Given the sensitivity and danger of any domestic group being associated with the "Great Satan," are there proactive and helpful steps -- secret or otherwise -- that the United States should take to improve the chances of a "velvet revolution"? What aspects of the velvet revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia might apply to Iran? Finally, is there likely any truth to Iranian charges that the United States or other outside players were behind the unrest surrounding the elections?

Or would you advise against the mission entirely and resign in protest rather than execute it -- perhaps telling the president that such a strike would likely fail, be counterproductive to other U.S. goals in the region, and push the Iranians into a faster nuclear arms race?

As the clock ticks, is there any substantive action that Obama can and should take -- something beyond mere words -- to get these talks going, and in particular, anything to get Netanyahu to agree to a total freeze on growth in settlements? Would prospects for a deal be better served if the rickety Netanyahu government fell? Should the White House also be talking to Hamas? And just how dire are the consequences of a complete derailing of this diplomatic track -- does the world really collapse if the stalemate continues, however much Obama's prestige may suffer?

And what can and should be done, at home and abroad, to make sure that no second attack occurs, ever?

Meanwhile, the Taliban is inflicting record casualties, with August the deadliest month on record for coalition forces; last month's Afghan elections were marred by widespread fraud; and polls say that the majority of the U.S. public believes the war is not worth fighting. Many observers draw the parallel to Iraq at its worst and to George W. Bush's "surge" there of reinforcements who are widely, albeit controversially, credited with turning that conflict around.

Should Obama gamble that more troops and new tactics will turn the tide, as Bush did in Iraq, and how many more troops would it take? Or does Obama risk his presidency by getting bogged down in another Asian land war in support of an increasingly undemocratic government? And what's the alternative to an "Afghan surge" -- perhaps, as conservative columnist George Will wrote last week, withdrawing and relying on special forces, intelligence and drones just to monitor the Afghanistan-Pakistan border?

To kick things off, your moderator notes that he's been reading "Joint Publication 3-13: Information Operations," which includes the military's guidebook for cyber war. The entire report is significant because it reflects the military's experience with counterinsurgency operations in Iraq. The doctrine envisions the "information environment" as equally important to the physical world when it comes to fighting, and defeating, adversaries.

For five decades during the Cold War, there was a rough consensus around a strategy of containing communism, resisting regional advances by the Soviets without escalating to a world war. But since the Soviet Union fell in 1991, a blizzard of buzzwords and white papers has never added up to a new national strategy. After 9/11, George W. Bush offered a "global war on terrorism" including pre-emptive attacks on potential threats such as Iraq -- a strategy that Barack Obama has repudiated but not replaced.

So what should America's new national strategy look like, at least in outline? Has anyone in or out of office already put forward principles that the nation should adopt? Is there already an unspoken consensus emerging that simply needs someone to give it a name? Or was containment a fluke, and is a formal, explicit national strategy something that most nations throughout history have happily done without?

A note to our contributors: Given the scope of this question and Washington's usual August slowdown, we will proceed at an appropriately stately pace and keep the discussion open for two weeks instead of the normal one, with the next topic not launching until Monday the 24th.

The White House is doing a lot of walking back of public comments lately -- of Biden's assertion that Russia is a has-been global power; of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's suggestion that the U.S. might want to create a "defense umbrella" over the Middle East to counter Iran's ambitions in the region; of Biden's earlier remark that Israel might have a green light from the U.S. on militarily taking out Iran's nuclear program. Some analysts have welcomed Biden's candor on Russia, for example, as a refreshing glint of truth -- he said that "they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable." But others say Biden is only complicating President Obama's efforts to "reset" the U.S-Russia relationship on friendlier and more pragmatic ground.

Should Obama muzzle Biden and others on his team? Is part of the problem the president's "special envoy" approach to hot-button regions, and do the mixed messages point to a wider confusion in the administration's foreign policy approach?

What kind of military is Gates shaping? Is he merely trimming deadwood on the margins, or does he offer a vision of a positive alternative to business-as-usual? How substantial, as opposed to symbolic, is his progress so far? And how far, realistically, can he get before the next presidential election in 2012?