[mylife]

And here's where the scale of the Bush gamble becomes clear. Islam and "the West" have a long history. And, without rehashing the last millennium and a half, the Muslim conquest of Europe and then the Crusades and the fall of Andalusia, if you take out a map of the world and look at the rise of the European empires you notice a curious thing: in conquering the world the imperial powers for the most part simply bypassed the Islamic world. They made Africa and South Asia and Latin America and everywhere else seats of European power, but they left the Middle East alone. And, even when they eventually got their hands on the region, after the First World War, they made no serious attempt to reform the neighborhood. We live with the consequences of that today.

Thank God GWB is unwilling to accept the status quo. Quite honestly the europeans made a complete mess of the middle east after WWI and GWB was unwilling to continue along with the consequences of thier actions/inactions

[octavianaugustus]

This Steyn paragraph is one of the most brilliant summaries of world history I have ever read! However, the Europeans did not "simply bypass the Islamic world". It took the Portuguese King, Henry The Navigator, most of the 1400's to creep down the coast of Africa and to find a sea route to India and China. They took the long way around precisely because the Crusades could not crack the Islamic nut, so to speak!