Victor Davis Hanson Ping !
Can Islam coexist with the West and its modernity or will events result in a war that may, in the end, provoke a nuclear retaliation and a third world war, a war more terrible and destructive than has ever been known?
I surely hope not. And in fact I don’t think it will happen that way. Many of the Gulf States live with and thrive on modernism, and seem to have accommodated Islam with it, albeit with a strong dose of anti-Semitism and convenient anti-Western parlor talk.
The danger, as I see it, is that the terrorists still do not fully comprehend their peril or the strong visceral hatred of them that they have earned in the West. Thus countries like Syria, Lebanon, and Iran that think this is all a funny game discount the real peril that they are in. If there is another 9-11 and if the terrorists are shown to have originated from a Middle East country that knowingly harbored them, then the American reaction really would be terrible. It would have to be— if we were to continue our civilization. Ask yourself what we would have done had the Soviets sent a one-kiloton cruise missile into the World Trade Center. As I gauge US public opinion, it is in a holding pattern, watching events in Iraq. It simmers over the beheadings; it is tired of seeing the Arab Street; it has no patience with the Arab talking heads who assure us that we are to blame, but for the moment it is not ready to unleash its full power. So let us hope that nuts like the mullahs, Mr. Assad, the Pakistani border al Qaedists, or Hezbollah do not do something stupid—because this time there is no real restraint on American counter-responses.