On a wider scale, the Islamic terrorism is a response to tyranny and self-delusion in the Arab world. Islamic terrorists fight the former, and embrace the latter. But both the acceptance of tyranny, and fondness for self-delusion, are still problems in the Moslem, especially the Arab, world. Until those two self-defeating habits are overcome, unrest will continue. The invasion of Iraq kick- started the process, removing the local tyrant, and forcing all Iraqis to confront the delusions that have led them to defeat after defeat over the last half century. The Islamic terrorists can be beaten down in the short term. That's been done a lot of late. But unless the bad habits are changed, the terrorists will keep coming back.
The next wave of jihad could well find that it has access to weapons formerly reserved for nations as nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons technology become cheap enough for non-state actors to exploit. We could face a future 9/11 orders of magnitude greater than the 2001 version.
And if that technology is available to Moslem jihadi terrorists, it will be available to Western, Jewish, or Hindu private groups that are willing to fight nuclear fire with nuclear fire.
So winning our current war on terror must include more than just beating the jihadis on the battlefields and sweeping up their operatives in police sweeps away from the battlefield. We must eliminate the conditions that breed jihadi ideology and jihadis. This is a battle that we must help Moslems themselves win. Which means we must stay involved in the Moslem world to reform Islam. Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, and other places that overthrow their dictators must be supported and pushed towards real democracy that confronts their problems rather than seeking to assign blame to others for their own problems. Autocrats who remain must be pushed toward reform and opposed where we can. Even when we fail in individual countries--perhaps because they really are not ripe for such change--we should not be discouraged and seek refuge in the false hope of "stability" by supporting "our" autocrats.
Heck, maybe this just isn't the time for anybody and maybe even our efforts in Iraq will fail to build deep roots of democracy. But still we should try. Eventually these countries can be made ready with the grunt work of nurturing civic institutions and thoughts and with their own efforts to modernize. Besides, it never hurts to be seen siding with the people over the corrupt rulers for a better future for those people.
I know that the success in killing Osama bin Laden is causing many here to want to haul out the "mission accomplished" banner and come home. But the war isn't about even the Islamist terrorist organizations we are fighting let alone individual leaders. The war can only really be won when Islam does not have a sizable minority willing to tolerate or even cheer on from their homes the jihad and which provide the cannon fodder recruits for jihad.
Or, maybe we'll find it is worse than even that, and our only hope is to win periodic wars when a new jihad breaks out. I hope not.
It's not called the Long War for nothing, you know.
