[txrangerette]

I know you're convinced, but the brush you use to paint is too broad.

Islam in the hands of the committed jihadists is warring on the Muslims who just want to go about their every day lives and make a buck, feed their families and survive. There are many many millions of "every day lives Muslims" who despite Koranic passages flung at the world to justify the jihadists' barbarism really aren't on board with that. They are being slaughtered by it, if they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

President Bush, his rhetoric about the religion aside, is informed and wise enough to see that some Muslims are TRYING to fight on our side against the barbaric jihadists and he has made common cause with them. In your world view, every Iraqi Muslim is an enemy to be subjegated or destroyed. In Bush's world view you offer them something by backing them against the jihadists in their midst.

That doesn't make Bush a Liberal. It means you don't like his approach.

His approach had every chance of working except for the surrenderer Lib Dems and media here and their brethren in Europe. I'm convinced his view is correct but it requires support behind it and THAT is what has fallen away.

On that, the Left and more than few of the Right have joined hands to bring it down.

[listenhillary]

Osama wanted an all out war on his religion. It was a major part of his plan.

[listenhillary]

Good post by the way.

[Guenevere]

Well said.

[Guenevere]

What happens now?....agreeing with what you said...where do we go from here?

[Siena Dreaming]

There are many many millions of "every day lives Muslims" who despite Koranic passages flung at the world to justify the jihadists' barbarism really aren't on board with that.

I agree. The "nuke them all" crowd who call Pres. Bush a liberal for cooperating with moderate Muslims have their heads in the sand.

[Capt. Tom]

Islam in the hands of the committed jihadists is warring on the Muslims who just want to go about their every day lives and make a buck, feed their families and survive.

Of course they are killing those heretics. Islam isn't about family,friends and country. It is about converting the world to Islam or making the Infidels subject to it. You are not doing that if you are more interested in worldly things like a job, vacations health insurance , personal appearance, retirement,education for your kids etc.

Worse yet for these so called moderate Muslims is they were born into the faith and have adopted the Infidel lifestyle, or are drifting in that direction. Muslim Fundamentalist are fighting and dying to kill us Infidels while the moderates sit on their hands,or become our useful idiots and collaborate with us.

So killing them along with us Infidels is not a problem for the fundamentalists. But they need them for now, just like the bears and deer need the trees in the forest for cover. - tom

[Marine_Uncle]

We continue to see wide variances in how people categorize individual muslims. This is to be expected. We continue to see how people of varying levels of understanding view opportunities to pursuade muslim nations as how they can modify their behavior to in effect set them free from thousands of years of rigid mind control.
Like any battle, it is difficult in the early stages to make any judgment as how things will turn out.

[backtothestreets]

I know you're convinced, but the brush you use to paint is too broad.

The brush is very broad. It is also heavy and difficult to wield. I am entirely certain that as you state, there are millions of Muslims that want little more than to eek out a living for their families. And I have to believe many are good people at their core, and virtually trapped by Islam. If I may share a similar perspective to which I am tied.

I never knew my paternal grandmother as well as I would have liked. And her parents passed while I was in my infancy. I mention them as they were German-Austrian. They were very good people. Despite having lived in the US for decades, their ties to family left behind remained strong. Like my grandmother and her parents, these were good people. They were also part of the population that comprised Nazi Germany.

Many of our distant relatives didn't survive the war. My grandmother never faulted our government for their deaths, be they young or old. As she taught me, there was no physical way of identifying a good German from a bad German. Because of the acts of a few, all had to be seen as the same until the enemy was defeated.

I know it was heart wrenching for my grandmother. Even as a teenager in the late nineteen-sixties, I recall her clutching the aged letters of loved ones that didn't survive the war. I also know she knew there was no other way the Nazis could be defeated as they had no physical characteristic that would distinguish them from good Germans.

If life were so simple that all that sought to make a buck, feed their families and survive would identify people as good, then we've no enemies anywhere. I'm certain you know such a perspective would be fallacy. I know too that you are of good conscience from your reply.

Because my view is that it is Islam that produces our enemies, just as Nazism once produced our enemies, then yes, I do view all Iraqi Muslims as equals. Only their abandonment of that which is driving the war brought upon us would set one Iraqi apart from another. I further believe such Iraqis exist, but they are essentially trapped within a ideological society that would murder them if they sought to abandon Islam. We should offer these persons every protection possible once they made themselves known to us. They are the future of a truly free Iraq. We did the same as our forces occupied German towns and cities during WWII.

It won't be easy. War never is. But war is being made upon us, and being mere mortals, we've no way to distinguish the good from the bad within a population until they identify themselves. Please believe I wish so much there were an easier way. I know too that difficult times lie ahead for all of us. The times will call us to do that which is contrary to our American heritage, just as it called past generations to secure our freedom.