I was stopped by someone the other week who said it was not surprising there was so much terrorism in the world when we invaded their countries (meaning Afghanistan and Iraq). No wonder Muslims felt angry.
I said to him: tell me exactly what they feel angry about. We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a UN-supervised democratic process.
And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims.
Why aren't they angry about the people doing the killing? The odd thing about the conversation is I could tell it was the first time he'd heard this argument.
This extremism can be defeated. But it will be defeated only by recognising that we have not created it; it cannot be negotiated with; pandering to its sense of grievance will only encourage it; and only by confronting it, the methods and the ideas, will we win.
First of all, note that the Europeans think that even Afghanistan caused the enemy to hate us. This doesn't mesh well with our less hard core-Left's assertion that Afghanistan is the good war. Absent Iraq, our Left would hate the Afghan campaign, too.
And it doesn't explain all that pre-October 2001 terrorism directed at us.
But more to the point, if freeing Moslems from brutal and oppressive regimes and providing opportunities for democracy angers Moslems, why should we even care that they are angry with us? Why should we use our power to help save themselves instead of the far easier job of just destroying them?
If I thought that our current fight won't neutralize the jihadi nutball ideology in the long run, I'd be in the "more rubble, less trouble" school.
