That “crusader fort” image has a broader symbolism. The post-American world is arising before our eyes. According to the IMF, China will become the dominant economic power by 2016. Putin is on course to return to the Kremlin corner office. In Tehran, the mullahs nuclearize with impunity. New spheres of influence are being established in North Africa, in Central Europe, in the once reliably “American lake” of the Pacific. Can America itself be a crusader fort? A fortress secure behind the interminable checkpoints of Code Orange TSA bureaucratic torpor while beyond the moat the mob jeers “Die, die, foreigners”? Or in the end will it prove as effortlessly penetrable as the “secure room” of the Afghan Interior Ministry?
What he is saying is that The 50 or so years of absolute American dominance is over. The reason is not that America has declined but that much of the world is catching up.
All the events noted are change. Except for Russia that is actually in decline, growth and modernization are forces demanded by people who have learned that there can be a much better life. America has shown the way. That way includes Chinese teenage girls in Daisy Mae’s. It includes boys in NFL T shirts. That way is change.
It is this love of things modern that fuels the Islamic retrograde effort. There are those who can’t make the mental leap from the far past into the present or future.