We Changed Hardly at All

Submitted by Arnold J. Shaw (United States), Sep 12, 2006 at 08:03

To Daniel Pipes:

9/11 has changed most Americans very little. The war we are fighting affects us hardly at all here at home. We, along with our leaders, remain quite ignorant about Islam, Muslims and Arabs. The president still tries to conflate the war in Iraq with a war against terror.

We have emboldened, even nurtured, radical Islam and Muslims all over the globe. While a small number of individuals act, murderous maniacs dominate the communications platforms and have influenced many of their co-religionists to a more virulent ,albeit misguided ,hatred of America, Jews, Israel and the West than they already harbored

It is a grim picture since we are fighting fanatical religious ideologues whose objective is unstated, even non-existent, except perhaps that they want to die killing infidels and cause death to as many Jews and Americans as possible... because this is what they are commanded by Allah to do.

We need a way forward at a grim, dangerous time. Leaving Iraq would unfortunately be communicated as a defeat of the US, Jews, etc. Not leaving puts us in the middle of a viscious "insurgency" with no clear end in sight. I would rather take the fight to radical Islam all over the globe in various ways, Focusing instead on lotiions, moisturizers ,unguents and aloe seems a litlle weak and overwrought. (What next? Body cavity searches because some lunatic secretes explosives there. They swallow and hide large amounts of drugs this way.)

We are fighting a religious war against an enemy whose objectives are unclear, even to them. Religious wars are ugly; until we acknowledge the nature of the conflict, we can't divine a course of action that makes sense.

We knew little about Islam before 9/11: it seems our education since then had been almost absent and ineffectual. Our leaders are incapable of enlightening us. A deeply polarized political and public debate here in the States is useless in combatting the threat.

Who should we go see to put an end to the "war on terror"?

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