Don't paint things too black. We are at war with Sunni Salafism and the "Hastener" sect of the Shi'ite "Twelvers". It may come to being at war with the Mohammedans generally, but we aren't there yet.
I pointed out on another thread that the 'Religion of Peace' slogan is propaganda. But it's propaganda useful to both sides. The enemy may use it as a cloak for evil intentions. We can use it it encourage the Mohammedan who doesn't really want to fight jihad to follow his desire and *not* fight jihad.
The idea is to not have to fight all of "Isalmdom", vigorously fight the two sects mentioned above, and leave an Islam which looks like PM Maliki of Iraq, the Aga Khan (leader of the Shi'ite 'Seveners' who have been very peaceful since the Mongols thrashed the Assassins), King Abudullah of Joradn and the nice Pakistani cabby down the street.
It might not work.
Clarity demands we see this as a religious war, but for now, we're just fighting two Mohammedan sects. We (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and NATO (in Afghanistan) and the Ethiopians (in Somalia) are taking the fight to the Salafists (with intermittent help from some Arab governments, notably Jordan). The Israelis are taking the fight to the Twelver "Hasteners" (in Lebanon).
Let's not start a global conflagration yet.
I agree with post 9, the enemy is not all Islam. The enemy is the two or three radical sects of Islam. Knowing that, our battle must focus on that enemy with force and our western message of accommodation - we can live together, but threaten me at your peril.
President Bush needs to call our struggle by the correct name, not some vague war on terror. Our military well knows our enemy, now we must focus our civilian population in order we carry out this long term fight.
Outstanding point! I’d only add a caution… ideas aren’t uniforms! How does one differentiate between friend and foe in a war of this sort? Surprisingly, it’s not that difficult to pick out an ideological enemy under the right circumstances. Culture plays a big role in it so we shouldn’t expect a farm boy from the heartland to do it. It’s easier to tell friends from enemies in our own culture than it is someone else’s. That’s a lesson in guerilla warfare the ancient colonial empires never learned and we’re learning the hard way. We’ve yet to engineer an effective strategy that fully leverages indigenous culture to identify our ideological enemies. One might say, "Well HUMINT, the Iraqis are standing up and they are policing their own now". I’d say we put as many friendly uniforms on our enemies as we did our friends. That made life all the tougher for our soldiers from the heartland. Unfortunately, the way we fought this war, there wasn’t much of an alternative. The problem is that nations always fight with lessons learned from the last war. Saddly, we're no different.