No, the real problem we have to solve is the unhealthy appeal of jihad in the Islamic world as an answer to their problems--by attacking the West--and as the source of an explanation for why they have problems--the West. There is a civil war within Islam to modernize and unless we win that war, even defeating al Qaeda just buys us a little time to be left alone to live our lives in peace while doing nothing to prevent the next time when we won't be left alone--with threats so great that our freedoms may not survive an actual clash of civilizations that becomes a battle to the death.
So in the short run, this is nice to read:
On a steady slide. On the ropes. Taking shots to the body and head.
That's how White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan described Al Qaeda on Wednesday as he offered the first on-record confirmation that Al Qaeda's latest second-in-command was killed last week in Pakistan -- roughly four months after Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden there.
In an Associated Press interview, Brennan said the death of Atiyah Abd al-Rahman in Pakistan's tribal areas last week was a "huge blow" to the group, damaging the network and keeping Al Qaeda's leadership too busy trying to hide to plot new attacks.
That's great. The immediate problem is to defeat the guys actively trying to kill us. I won't dismiss this at all. We need to do this. It is good that al Qaeda is on the ropes.
But we undermine the bigger picture when we hand our Islamist enemies the rope to hang us and we help them fit the noose around our neck:
An unprecedented collaboration between the Obama administration and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC, formerly called the Organization of the Islamic Conference) to combat “Islamophobia” may soon result in the delegitimization of freedom of expression as a human right.
The administration is taking the lead in an international effort to “implement” a U.N. resolution against religious “stereotyping,” specifically as applied to Islam. To be sure, it argues that the effort should not result in free-speech curbs. However, its partners in the collaboration, the 56 member states of the OIC, have no such qualms. Many of them police private speech through Islamic blasphemy laws and the OIC has long worked to see such codes applied universally. Under Muslim pressure, Western Europe now has laws against religious hate speech that serve as proxies for Islamic blasphemy codes.
Why is clinging to God and guns OK for some people and not for others? Oh, right. When it is retreating before the ones actually willing to use the guns against us justified by their god.
UPDATE: Strategypage addresses the reasons I think the Long War is really all about Moslems controlling the large minority of jihadis who wage their own private wars against the West (and other Moslems) and the even larger minority that tolerates the jihadis (or even quietly draw satisfaction from sticking it to the West for whatever grievances they have. We should help in this fight. And defend ourselves from the jihadis until fellow Moslems can control them, of course.
