So I was glad to read Michael Barone bringing up a recent Pew poll of attitudes in the Moslem world:
Polls in the United States may show that Americans have become less supportive of our efforts in Iraq as the suicide bombings and roadside-bomb attacks continue. But the Pew polls in these Muslim countries show that those attacks have moved Muslim opinion against the terrorists and toward democracy. Muslims around the world cannot help but notice that Iraq is moving, however imperfectly, toward representative government. They can't have missed the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon and the expulsion of Syrian forces from Beirut. They may have noticed the small concessions to democracy in Saudi Arabia.
Tentative steps toward democracy and improving opinions of America in the Moslem world. All after two wars that overthrew thug dictatorships in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Once, Nazism was popular even here in America. But once Hitler blew his brains out in a bunker rather than see his own defeat, Nazism lost its appeal. Even communism lost much of its appeal outside of American college faculties after Moscow imploded.
If we don't lose our nerve and keep on the strategic offensive to replace hopeless jihadism with liberty and democracy, we will see the day when the jihadis are thoroughly discredited and have no appeal.
We are winning this war. Both narrowly in Iraq and generally. Staying the course is the only thing that makes sense under the circumstances.
