[untenured]

Third, grand strategy requires the ability to respond rapidly to the unexpected. It acknowledges that trends can reverse themselves suddenly, that “tipping points” can occur, and that leaders must know how to exploit them. The academy loves this sort of thing when it happens on the basketball court or the hockey rink. In the classroom, though, it resists the idea: instead the emphasis is too often on theory, which promises predictability, and therefore no surprises. That’s why the academy tends to be so surprised when events like the end of the Cold War and 9/11 take place.

Interesting. One wonders whether there will be a sudden tipping point among the Arab thugocracies, or against the cutthroat Islamists. Will people suddenly have the courage to collectively say, "Enough!" or (with regard to death-cult Islamism) is what people have in the Islamic world really pretty much what they want?

[Tolik]

No way to know now. Good question.

My favorite author Orson Scott Card in his latest Sci-Fi novel Shadow of the Giant  (the last -- for now -- book of the Enders series) develops a thread going through the whole book that Islam will not become a true religion but will remain just a cult, until and only until that time when it will allow people freely and without any negative consequences to leave Islam. Until they truly have a choice to be or not to be Muslims, Muslims have no religious freedom, and Islam is not equal to other religions.

After a short googling, I found a good quote from one of his political articles :

....Here is the truth: I am not an enemy of Islam. I'm a believer in religious freedom, and any Muslim who accepts religious freedom -- including the freedom of Muslims to leave Islam if they choose -- is my friend, not my enemy. Let them persuade as many converts as they wish, in any country -- as long as they allow the same freedom to believers of other faiths.

Because ultimately that's what this war is all about. Freedom of religion versus the Islamicist claim to have a right to force Islamic law on everyone in every nation, and to kill anyone who opposes them.

That's the first freedom in the Bill of Rights.

And while the American Left is busy using that clause to tear down Nativity scenes and keep the Ten Commandments out of courtrooms, Americans and others, here and abroad, are dying because one religion -- Islam -- refuses to abide by the rules of religious tolerance.