Which of course means that opponents of fighting and defeating al Qaeda are crying out that al Qaeda isn't really much of a strategic threat to us:
Mr Sheehan, author of Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism Without Terrorizing Ourselves, says al-Qaeda’s success depends on provoking a disproportionate reaction from its targets. “Terrorism is an instrument of the weak and al-Qaeda is dependent on a psychological overreaction from the west and particularly the US ... Al-Qaeda is weakened but it is still dangerous because of its unrestrained intent to kill in large numbers.”
By overreacting, war critics of course mean actually fighting al Qaeda. So the war critics who want a law enforcement approach rely on the success against al Qaeda that has resulted from fighting and defeating them in Iraq to argue that fighting in Iraq is exactly the overreaction that helps our jihadi enemies.
Clearly, we have not overreacted. Overreacting would have consisted of viewing Islam as the enemy and waging war on the Islamic world.
Nor are we terrorizing ourselves. Our freedoms are still thriving despite the near-hysterical cries of war opponents who see J. Edgar Hoover in a dress in every shadow.
Instead, we have focused on fighting al Qaeda and have crippled that organization and wrecked its reputation in the Moslem world.
The psychological overreaction that could lead us to defeat even as we destroy al Qaeda is the refusal to fight back against terrorist attacks. There are those who really think that is is supreme tolerance to tolerate acts of murder against us. Their overreaction is to assume a supine position in the face of Islamist ideology and refuse to confront it. By "understanding" the jihadists and making allowances for them and thinking up excuses for their acts that even the jihadists don't believe, we weaken the ability of moderate Moslems to reject the radicals. If the West accepts even the worst of the jihadi claims and excuses them, moderate Moslems lose an important ally in reforming Islam to drain the swamp that supports bin Laden and his ilk.
Worse, we risk crippling our own freedoms by overreacting to fears that we might offend all Moslems by noting that we disagree with the head loppers and suicide bombers who claim to fight in Islam's name. The Mark Steyn show trial in British Columbia is a case in point.
Thus, it is a mistake to assume that the strategic threat posed by jihadis is to conquer the West. Or alternatively, that the strategic threat consists of turning our countries into police states to resist the jihadi terror threat. The strategic threat from the jihadis is cowing the West into passivity which allows the jihadists to seize control of their society and then their governments in the Arab and Moslem worlds.
Iraq, as I've written, has turned out to be a tactical success against one particular jihadi organization that feeds on jihadists ideology. A strategic victory requires us to cripple and nullify that jihadist ideology to make sure another organization doesn't rise up to replace al Qaeda. And we need to destroy and neutralize regimes that are willing to support even tiny jihadi organizations that lack popular support in their efforts to attack the West with whatever terrible weapon they can obtain.
Overreacting consists of pretending that no jihadist attack on the West is worthy of our resistance.
