I have issues with this charge on a number of levels, as I note here. And we have recent evidence that our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan are not immune to being discouraged.
But one has to ask, what if it is true?
What if the Islamic world is really angry that we overthrew a genocidal maniac who invaded his neighbors and sought nuclear and biological weapons to go with the chemical weapons he used internally and against Iran?
What if the Islamic world (or at least the 90% who are Sunni) are upset that we destroyed a minority Sunni Arab dictatorship that ruled and abused the Shia and Kurd majority?
What if the Islamic world is really angry that we have provided the Iraqis with a chance to have democracy, rule of law, a modern economy, and freedoms virtually unknown in the rest of the Islamic world?
If the Islamic world is angry at all that and in fact is so angry about those things that members will seek to kill us in greater numbers than they did prior to March 2003, isn't this a worrisome sign that maybe we aren't just at war with fanatics who have "hijacked" Islam? One may argue that the Moslem world isn't ready for democracy (I disagree), but if Moslem anger at even the attempt to provide democracy is real, we've been deprived of the opportunity to win the Long War by using democracy to undermine the appeal of Islamic fascism. That is, we won't be able to help Islam reform itself. And if we can't win that way, we have ample reservoirs of power that have been untapped these long five years that could destroy our enemies quite decisively.
I still think we can separate the jihadis from the vast majority of Moslems who'd rather just get along. Even if, as one might expect in the middle of a war, the enemy is mobilizing more forces to fight us, broader trends in the Moslem world against terror and in favor of democracy seem to show that we are making ground where it counts--we may yet save the Islamic world from the self-destructive traits that have been inculcated by Saudi extremists and spread by them throughout the Islamic community.
But if the vast majority of Moslems doesn't start loudly separating themselves from the jihadis, Max Boot states a lot in the West will conclude that all Islam hates the West:
The real enemy we face is not Islam per se but a violent offshoot known as Islamism, which is rooted, to be sure, in the Koran but which also finds inspiration in such modern Western ideologies as fascism, Nazism and communism. Its most successful exponents — from Hassan Banna and Sayyid Qutb to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden — are hardly orthodox interpreters of Islam. They are power-mad intellectuals in the mold of a Lenin or a Hitler. The problem is that the rest of the Muslim world, by not doing more to curb the radicals — whether out of fear or sympathy — lends credence to the most objectionable caricatures of their faith.
I agree. I have for several years argued this. The logic of that, I'm afraid, would make it a very Long War indeed. And one that won't turn out well for Islam.
