It will take a lot, and not just to overcome the soft-headed liberals. Conservatives in the west, and people like Russia’s Putin, who isn’t a conservative, but certainly isn’t a soft-headed liberal, either, reacted to 9/11, Madrid, and London with no visible seriousness either.
Bush let the Saudis and the rest of the Gulf powers entirely off the hook for 9/11 and continues to give them unlimited compass with zero accountability. And that’s to say nothing of the Islamist power elements in Pakistan.
As for what we did — unserious, at best. Saddam was a threat, and certainly a fascist, but an Islamofascist? Given that he’d rarely met an Islamist he wouldn’t gladly roast on a stake, not really. And would we have devoted an occupation force a tiny fraction of the post-WWII occupation force in Germany had we really wanted to make a difference?
What we did domestically — simply a farce. The sewn-on-badge unarmed can’t-pass-a-small-town-police-exam stalwarts of the Transportation Security Agency as our line of defense?
In Spain, the conservative then-government took pains to blame the Basques for the Madrid bombings. They lost to the Socialists in large because of that maneuver, and because (unfortunately) the attacks seemed to prove correct the Socialists argument that going into Iraq would cause blowback terrorism at home.
Every conservative element of British society was quick to demand a muted response to the London bombings, too. There wasn’t a single Tory who got up on his feet in the House of Commons to demand real crackdowns on Saudi-funded madrassas or the other elements toxifying the British-born Muslim communities.
“unserious, at best. Saddam was a threat, and certainly a fascist, but an Islamofascist?”
Saddam, pragmatically interested in doing harm against the US, allied himself with islamo-fasicst terrorists.
Iraq, strategically located, is the central battle on the war on islamo-fascist terrorism.