Edward _

Andrew McCarthy’s essay on NRO reads like a summary of every argument I’ve had over the past two years about whether or not we’re in a religious war disguised as a “war on terror.” In general, he stops short of saying our enemy is “Islam” (he carefully uses “militant Islam”), and he clarifies that doesn’t mean a war against a religion, but rather against an ideology.

Given that his first clarification is something it normally takes me months to get from those I debate, I consider McCarthy’s point of view refreshing to some degree. But I was actually quite disturbed as I read through his argument when it was confirmed for me what this war is really about for some: assimilation. Now this had occurred to me before, but it wasn’t until someone as honest with himself as McCarthy outlined the ideas here that it became crystal clear.

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In the previous thread on this topic, Constant Reader Bird Dog raised a good question about why Arabs choose to believe anti-American propaganda. The following response from reader Hilzoy deserves its own thread I believe:

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Each time an Islamist terrorist commits some atrocity against us, it’s natural to be angry.

It’s also natural to be angry indiscriminantly at Muslims. Not honorable, but natural. Until reason kicks in, that is.

But as the War on Terror progresses, I’m seeing a trend whereby Americans can’t get past what they see as a fundamental faithlessness among so-called Moderate Muslims: Why don’t they decry this violence? Are we to take their silence as sanction?

Personally, this strikes me somewhat as laziness and xenophobia (we don’t need our fellow Americans marching in the street to tell us they don’t support the likes of Timothy McVeigh). But I’ve realized that listing dozens of links to moderate Muslim sites that do decry the atrocities will not convince anyone for whom this remains a problem. So I’m abandoning the quantitative approach. It’s a problem. But where does it come from?

Let me begin by acknowledging the perception: the Muslims of the world are not as vocal about these acts of terror as we want/need them to be.

Personally, this “silence,” such as it is, doesn’t confuse me. I put two and two together and figure if a military power like the US is unable to completely protect itself from these killers, let alone track them down and bring them to justice, how are the people of much poorer nations supposed to stand up to them? In other words, there’s a bit of fear at play here. I fully expect, however, that argument to issue in charges of cowardice, and that’s unfair to the brave Muslims I know (and some prominent Muslim thinkers strongly deny that’s it), so I took some time to look deeper.

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Hat tip to readers Victor Falk and JimPortlandOR for suggesting and providing information on this topic.
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the more you know the less you panic

I’m setting up this thread for the sharing of solid information about “dirty bombs” and what to do should one be detonated. A good source of key questions and answers is this thread from Vanderbilt University. This discussion also references a good overview published in the Washington Post a while back (I can’t find the article on the WP’s site, but the considerate Vanderbilt folks provide it on theirs). First two quotes below from that WP article.

Right to the most pressing question:

John Zielinski, professor of military strategy and operations at the National War College in Washington, estimates that, generally, someone a mile from the blast is likely to walk away unscathed. And “you could be within a couple hundred yards of it, and if you are upwind, you might not have a problem at all,” he says. “If they set it off in a street and you are one block over and behind a building, there might be no risk.”

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Prefatory Note: Despite the charges of cheapshotery my last attempt at this provoked, I’m going to dive head first into how much goodwill a touch of humility brings again. Given how Buddha-less the blogosphere has gotten over this torture scandal issue, let me note up front, for clarity, my driving concern here is the US’s image in the world (and how we need a good one to do right by Iraq), not Bush’s or Kerry’s image in the upcoming election.

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European allies are now even less enamored of our President than they were before the torture photos emerged. This is worrisome, given that before then, as a recent straw poll in Britain revealed, Bush was already pretty damn unpopular:

… perhaps the only surprising thing about the vehemence of anti-Bush feeling, based on a reading of newspapers, opinion polls and interviews around Europe, is how unsurprising it truly is. In fact, one reason the recent disclosures have proved so damaging to the American cause here is that Mr. Bush had so little good will upon which to draw. (emphasis mine)

This is not easily dismissed as transatlantic partisanship, unfortunately. Those polled here “were all Conservatives, by tradition and temperament the Republican Party’s natural friends across the Atlantic.”

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There seem to be two distinct camps in the debate on the War on Terror:

The Big War crowd argues that there are alliances and common interests among terrorist groups that extend far beyond al Qaida and anything short of total ideological warfare is doomed to failure (i.e., we’ll be targeted again unless we rip this worldwide threat out by its roots and destroy its ability to regenerate, and quickly).

The Little War crowd argues that we have a known, dangerous enemy, still at large, and we should have focussed our energies on targeting that enemy and its leader, so that we’re fighting one battle at a time, and fighting each one well (i.e., we’re using resources in Iraq that could be better used at the Afghanistan/Pakistan border).

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UPDATE: Based on the response from fellow bloggers on this site, I’ve rethought a central line in this post. I’ve left it in, willing to own up to my mistakes, but realize that I projected an objection to the line about “good liberals” on the Tacitus site to my thoughts about this issue here. My defense of Liberals (and the corresponding snark about “normal conservative stance”) belong on Tacitus, not here. Having conceded that (and underlined the offending bits for anyone who can forgive and carry on with this topic), let me clarify that this post is asking whether this critique of the Fallujah decision is on target or a bit hyperbolic.

Across the blogosphere conservative folks are fretting about the turn of events in Fallujah. Tacitus, worried that this is another Mogadishu moment, spares no scorn for Bush in his blistering attack. Andrew Sullivan worries that the unthinkable is happening: Bush is losing his resolve. And it’s made The Politburo Diktat question “what are we fighting for?”

And so I have to wonder—feeling that this does not follow the {{normal conservative}} stance that criticizing our leaders during war is unpatriotic—how FUBAR is the Fallujah decision, really?

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Via Kuro5hin
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In a letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair published in The Independent, an overwhelming host of former diplomats* argued that the effort in Iraq is doomed:

The conduct of the war in Iraq has made it clear that there was no effective plan for the post-Saddam settlement. All those with experience of the area predicted that the occupation of Iraq by the coalition forces would meet serious and stubborn resistance, as has proved to be the case. To describe the resistance as led by terrorists, fanatics and foreigners is neither convincing nor helpful. Policy must take account of the nature and history of Iraq, the most complex country in the region. However much Iraqis may yearn for a democratic society, the belief that one could now be created by the coalition is naive.

It’s time to acknowledge we’ve made some mistakes and move on, quickly, to Plan B here.

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