The greatest tool of those seeking to break the "war on terror' ideology is to brand us all: "right wingers" -"racists".
It harms sincere individuals and masses who are plain worried and ave legitimate concerns about violence.
Absolutely. It just reminds me of the 1996 VP debate when Gore said something to Jack Kemp like: “Jack, unlike the rest of your party, you seem to be a very humane person.” To which Kemp essentially said: “Thanks”...i.e., legitimizing the rest of the statement. (credit to Rush for pointing out that slam)
If we don’t fight in the trenches, we lose. We won WW2 because we fought cave to cave in the Pacific and we actually encouraged people to hate the Japs (at the time), in order to keep up morale in fight we could have easily lost. We did not win the war by being nice and trying to win over the hearts and minds of the oppressed Japanese people, we won by correctly identifying the enemy and then clobbering them...and then we went to work on their hearts and minds.
If the West does not soon figure that out, they’re toast.