Radical Islam is worth worrying about

[Daniel Pipes said] "Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the Gulag?" A thoughtful answer to that question is sobering. The Islamists have:

• A potential Access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.
• A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.
• An impressively conceptualized, funded and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill and electoral success.
• An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, form illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians."

Add to the above "a huge number of committed cadres. If Islamists constitute 10 percent to 15 percent of the Muslim population worldwide,they number some 125 million to 200 million persons, or a far greater total than all the fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived."

-- William F. Buckley, quoting Norman Podhoretz, townhall.com, 9/6/07

How to define victory

Iraq is only one campaign in the war against the nations that sponsor terrorism.Victory isn't an Iraq that can defend and govern itself. Victory is defined as the end of state sponsorship of Islamic terrorism, which means forcing Iran,Syria, and Saudi Arabia and others out of that business. Nothing more is needed, and nothing less will defeat an existential threat to America. -- Diana West, townhall.com, 9/7/07

Better teach your grandkids to shoot

We fight and defeat these people [i.e. Islamic terrorists] here and now [in Iraq], or my grand-daughter will be fighting them in Des Moines forty years on.. . . You know, as I do, that there are people who want to kill every American in Iraq. And if they succeed in doing that, they will come here and try to kill every American in America. -- Rich Galen, townhall.com, 9/12/07

Keeping Up Appearances

The conclusion I came away with after a couple of rounds [of diplomatic talks]was that the Iranians were only interested in the appearance of discussion, of being seen at the table with the U.S. instead of actually doing serious business. -- Ambassador Ryan Crocker, congressional testimony, September 2007.

If Uncle Sam Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy

The paradox is this: There has been no follow-on attack against he United States [since 9/11]. The United States did dislodge Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, and while the war goes badly, the casualties are a small fraction of those lost in Vietnam. Most important, bin Laden's dream is gone. No Muslim state has been overthrown and replaced with a regime that bin Laden would find worthy. He has been marginalized by both the United States and by his rival Shiite radicals, who have picked up the mantle that he dropped. His own jihadist movement is no longer under his effective control. . . .

The effect on the United States is much more profound. The war, both in Iraq and against al Qaeda, has worn the United States down over time. The psychology of fear has been replaced by a psychology of cynicism. The psychology of confidence in war has been replaced by a psychology of helplessness. Exhaustion pervades all.

That is the single most important outcome of the war. What happens to bin Laden is, in the end, about as important as what happened to [Che] Guevara.Legends will be made of it -- not history. But when the world's leading power falls into the psychological abyss brought about by time and war, the entire world is changed by it. Every country rethinks its position and its actions.Everything changes.

. . . The United States has psychologically begun tearing itself apart over both the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. Whatever your view of that, it is a fact -- a serious geopolitical fact.

-- George Friedman, Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 9/11/07

The Games Russkies Play

The Russians are chess players and geopoliticians. In chess and geopolitics, the games is routine and then, suddenly, there is an opening. You seize the opening because you might never get another one. The United States is inherently more powerful than Russia, save at this particular moment. Because of a series of choices the United States has made, it is weaker in the places that matter to Russia. Russia will not be in this position in two or three years. It needs to act now.

Therefore, Putin will go to Iran on Oct. 16 and will work to complete Iran's civilian nuclear project. What agreements he might reach with Iran could give the United States nightmares. If the United States takes out Iran's nuclear weapons, the Russians will sympathize and arm the Iranians even more intensely.If the Americans launch an extended air campaign, the Russians will happily increase the supply of weapons even more.

. . . At a certain point, sooner rather than later, the Iranians must examine whether they want to play the role of the Russian cape to the American bull.

-- George Friedman, Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 9/17/07

Figure It Out; It's Not That Hard

Which makes more sense: trusting the judgment of military commanders closest to"conditions on the ground" in Iraq and with no political ax to grind, or that of partisan armchair generals on the left aisle of the Senate with little to no expertise and no constitutional authority to act as mini-commanders in chief? -- David Limbaugh, townhall.com, 9/14/07

Of Hammers and Nails

Liberals like to say of the Bush administration's allegedly militaristic foreign policy that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Likewise, if the only tool you have is dialogue, everyone looks like a reasonable interlocutor. -- Rich Lowry, townhall.com, 9/24/07

How to end a war

Just because you want to leave doesn't mean the bully is finished with you. You can pull the US military out of Iraq, but that doesn't end the war. Victory and defeat end wars. -- Senor Dangriga, 9/14/07, senordangriga.blogspot.com