A liberal/anti-American exposes his lack of vision. It's not just against the United States and our allies, Muslim terrorists have attacked in Russia, in Nigeria and the Sudan, in Argentina, in Algeria. They're attacking Christians in Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan (also animists)and the Phillipines. They're attacking Buddhists in Thailand, Hindus in India and Bali, Muslims in Algeria, Palestine and Pakistan. They're attacking the Han Chinese (atheists, taoists?) in China's far west.
Muslims are on the warpath against every other religion and against people within their own religion. Their economies are collapsing, without oil, they produce almost nothing. Their culture is collapsing, in Egypt in the 50's 3000 books were published, today 300 are published a year.
Depending how it goes in post-Saddam Iraq, the world may have to quarantine the Muslim world, so they can only foul their own nests, rather than murder the rest of us.
I don't understand what else is needed to drill this idea into the heads of our population! The politically correct crap, the public education (indoctrination) is causing lots of people to disregard the threat. The enemy is ISLAM, the religion itself, and not the Moslems. The US MUST push hard openly to reform the theology and dogma that has become militant Islam.
That argument seems to have taken hold in much of the Muslim world.
No s-it. It's Islam stupid:™
Ethiopia
Somalia
Sudan
Chad
Algeria
Egypt
Tunisia
Nigeria
Uganda
Israel
Lebanon
Yugoslavia
Russia
India
Afghanistan
Bangladesh
Pakistan
Phillipines
Indonesia
East Timor
Thailand
United States
You don't let your opponent dictate the terrain on which you fight. You don't give him a billion allies simply because he wants them and declares that he wants them. The writer of this peace seems to regard the Islamicists -desire- for a religious war as dispositive and final, as though we have no choice in the matter, and therefore it is blindness and folly not to "call" it a religious war. Which is just poor strategy. We'd rather fight a war against a few nutjobs, because it is easier to win.
"But it isn't just a few nutjobs, because some of them want a religious war". True. But equally, it isn't a full blown religious war, because some of them want it to be just a few nutjobs. Where it really falls is not up to Bin Laden and company, nor up to us. It is up to those billion Muslims and their governments.
If they choose to side with Bin Laden, they get religious war. If they choose to side with us, they get a war against a few nutjobs. We are deliberately presenting them with that choice, because it enables them to back the winning side in a minor war if they choose cooperation with us. Whereas they will be on the losing side of a major war if they choose confrontation.
This is simply smart strategy, not denial of a "painful reality". There is no more "reality" to Bin Laden's desires than ours, and we have rather more power to get the split to happen our way. What will Muslim governments and populations choose? They will of course split, with some siding with each, based on their own interests and pressures on them, etc. We will get most of them, however, because losing major wars is not enjoyable.
It will mostly be powers that can't live with us anyway, who side with the Laden view - without being particularly religious about it, incidentally. Thus Saddam doesn't have a pious bone in his body. But he knows he is at war with us regardless, and he'd rather have allies in that war than face us alone. While e.g. Pakistan needs us desperately to avoid being isolated and at the mercy of India's superior military. So even under heavy domestic political pressure from Islamicists, their government sides with us.
The ordinary interests of geopolitics are not repealed by Bin Laden -wanting- a religious war. States have interests and pursue those interests, by choosing who to treat as an enemy and who to treat as a friend. They do not have any desire to abdicate their power to make those decisions to a self appointed fanatic who just wants to throw them against said fanatic's own enemies.
You have to recognize the two fronts of Bin Laden and company's campaign. Toward us, they want war as representatives of a billion people. Toward the existing leaders of those billion people, they are usurpers who want those leaders' jobs.