Who these people are, what drives them, and how they can hate Western civilization so much while being showered with all of its benefits is a question that will take years for many people to grapple with. Most commentators have only begun to explore this question, and their results have been mixed. (See, for example, a recent effort by John McWhorter.)

But the lesson of Iraq is that this ideological conflict is the real key to America's long-term survival. Winning the war requires more than military strength. It requires moral and intellectual strength. Only moral strength will give us the confidence to persist against the enemy, and only intellectual strength will allow us to win the internal ideological struggle against Western self-hatred.

If the danger within our own culture is the first lesson of Iraq, the second lesson is about the culture of the Arab and Islamic world--which is now revealed as being much worse than most Americans were ready to believe. Throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, large minorities of the population--in some areas, such as the Palestinian territories, they are outright majorities--do not blink at constant warfare and destruction, at mothers willingly sending their sons to become suicide bombers, and at a ruthless chaos in which every sect and tribe seeks to impose a violent domination over every other sect and tribe.

This is the curse of Iraqi politics. It is why Iraq took so long to create a constitution. It is why Iraq's elections for its first permanent government were followed by a four-month-long political standoff before Iraqis could appoint a new prime minister. It is why every major political faction in Iraq also maintains its own armed militia. In the tradition of the Arab world--a tradition deeply rooted in Islam--the political ideal is not individual liberty nor even peaceful coexistence, but rather domination, the absolute rule of one sect, tribe, or faction over everyone else. This is why the Arabs so easily imported every totalitarian ideology they found in the West, indiscriminately mixing the influences of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao to provide the inspiration, first for the secular Arab dictatorships of the 20th century, and now for religious dictatorship.

Americans have never paid much attention to the internal cultural and political battles of the Arab and Muslim world. After the invasion of Iraq, they have had to pay attention, because the success of a crucial battle of the War on Terrorism depends on the political struggle in Iraq.

What they have seen is the ultimate refutation of the Multiculturalism of the left, which assured us that all cultures are "equally valuable" and that the cultures of the Third World are more equal than others. But Iraq has also been a rebuke to the glib confidence of some on the right who assured us that Arabs and Muslims are just like us, equally prepared to benefit from the blessings of a free society. In fact, the Iraqis have turned out to be far more violent, primitive, and tribalistic.

I think this lesson has been the most demoralizing to the average American. If Americans are "war weary," it is not because we have suffered massive casualties, because we haven't; most people do not even know anyone who has been killed or injured in Iraq. And it is certainly not because we are suffering from economic privation; this is a small and relatively inexpensive war. Americans are "war weary" because they are tired of having to pay attention to the unfamiliar and unattractive culture of the Middle East.

But the primitivism of the Arab and Islamic world does not mean that we should give up on Iraq. It is, in fact, the very reason we have to keep trying, because we can now glimpse the full brutality of the forces that will take over the Middle East if we do not oppose them with a better alternative.

And although it is easy to forget this, in the chaos that has come since, Iraq has also offered us a different lesson. The multiple elections held in Iraq in 2005, followed by that year's spontaneous popular demonstrations against Syrian tyranny in Lebanon--demonstrations inspired in part by the example of Iraq--all of these events are reminders that something better is possible. Even within the corrupt culture of the contemporary Arab world, the human spirit and a desire for some better kind of life is not dead.

But we have learned that the struggle to support the best men in the Arab and Muslim world, and to help them reform and improve the violent culture of their region, will be much more difficult and take much longer than many Americans had hoped.

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-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

Yay! The answer to success in Iraq is a persistent slow bleed to demoralize the enemy! Competance and effectiveness are no longer necessary.

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Oil Burner Kartel #35

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...oD/bioclip.jpg

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[where your comment hit]

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-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

I sense you are being sarcastic but somehow, it is true. OBL was surprised and encouraged by our tails between our legs in somalia and thus is encouraged that his future endevours will be successful.

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Uno mass: what would we have done in Somalia? Killed 100,000 of them and then left? Set up a govt? (please) Would we be there yet?

I see no wisdom -- none, zero, negatory -- in behaving in such a way as to keep OBL intimidated. F*** OBL. We've bloodied noses in Afg. and Iraq. Has it changed his POV?

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

1. Don't send the military into a strategically unimportant situation.
2. Don't send the military into an area you're unprepared to conquer at whatever cost in soldier's lives, civilians lives, and treasure.
3. If the crybabies in the press think starving children require military intervention, See rules number 1 & 2 or call the French.

This is a letter from the 'Arabs for Israel' website.


Open Letter to President Ahmadinejad

As a devout Muslim, you should recognize the State of Israel as a blessing expressing Allah’s will. Your aim to wipe Israel off the map defies the values of Islam expressed in the Holy Koran and through Islamic art.

In Islamic art, a uniform geometric pattern is purposely disrupted by he introduction of a counter-pattern to demonstrate that human creation is less than perfect. Based upon the belief that only Allah creates perfection, rug weavers from Islamic lands intentionally weave a small patch of dissimilar pattern to break the symmetry of their rugs. The Islamic artisan does not want to be perceived as competing with the perfection of Allah.

Perhaps you see a continuous pattern like a beautiful Islamic rug running from Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern borders of Iran. Shift your perception to see Israel, not as a blemish on the great Islamic rug, but as a small counter-pattern needed to realize Islamic values.

The ingathering of the Jewish People into its historic homeland in the midst of the Islamic world is the fulfillment of Mohammed’s prophecy in the Koran (Sura 17:104): “And we said to the Children of Israel, ‘scatter and live all over the world…and when the end of the world is near we will gather you again into the Promised Land.”

Switch your viewpoint to recognize the sovereign right of the Jews over the Land of Israel as the will of Allah as expressed in the Koran (Sura 5:20-21): “Remember when Moses said to his people: ‘O my people, call in remembrance the favor of God unto you, when he produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to any other among the people. O my people, enter the Holy Land which God has assigned unto you, and then turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.’”

This paradigm shift should transform your perception of Israel from an alien presence to a tiny golden seed from which a lush green Islamic tree has germinated and spread its roots and branches across North Africa and the Middle East.

Salam Aleikum,
Abu Musa

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Oh, then please elaborate on where I missed the point. I'm always looking to improve my reading comprehension.

__________________
'83 240D with 617.952 and 2.88
'01 VW Beetle TDI
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'78 280Z with L28ET - 12.86@110
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http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...oD/bioclip.jpg

That's a good piece. Let's hope for more outbreaks of sanity.

Muslims revered Jesus as a prophet also. Too bad his message is so little heeded in those lands at present.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

I agree with most of that. #2, I agree is largely true but if in the middle of a military intervention, it becomes clear that the rewards of conquering the area are far less than the costs, I don't see the wisdom in bulling ahead, out of sheer stubborness. Somalia was a mistake, IMO, and staying any longer would not have made it less so. Ditto Vietnam.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

#1 addresses both of the instances you mention.

B

It is a false assumption to think that winning the war is the objective of the powers that be. In the book, Nineteen Eighty-Four , Orwell says that the purpose of war is to maintain the Hierarchical Society.

I didn't read the whole page that I linked to but it looks like it makes the point.

Exactly. But the word "victory" needs to be uttered as a goal to be sure we don't make peace prematurely. Eeek, am I cynical or what?

__________________
'83 240D with 617.952 and 2.88
'01 VW Beetle TDI
'05 Jeep Liberty CRD
'89 Toyota 4x4, needs 2L-T
'78 280Z with L28ET - 12.86@110
Oil Burner Kartel #35

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...oD/bioclip.jpg

True, but it doesn't address how to respond after someone has foolishly sent troops into a strategically unimportant situation.

Somalia for example. Suppose we had stayed for years, and killed, say, 100 K gun happy Somalis and lost one or two K of our own. What sort of propaganda would OBL have taken from that?

I think the SOB was set on creating havoc one way or the other and the notion that we should have stayed in Somalia so as to make OBL think we were pretty tough is fanciful.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Sounds prescient to me.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K