The last bit of the article:
When President Bush declared a “war on terror,” cynics understood that he had no particular interest in the IRA or the Tamil Tigers, but that he was constrained from identifying the real enemy in any meaningful sense: In the fall of 2001, a war on Islamic this or Islamic that would have caused too many problems with Gen. Musharraf and the House of Saud and other chaps he wanted to keep on side. But it’s one reason, for example, why the Democrats, as soon as it suited them, had no difficulty detaching the Iraq front from the broader war. If it’s a “war on terror” against terrorist organizations, well, Saddam is a head of state and Iraq is a sovereign nation: the 1946 Long Telegram was long enough to embrace events in Ethiopia and Grenada 30 years later, but the “war on terror” template doesn’t comfortably extend to Iraq. Nor to the remorseless Wahhabist subversion of Europe. Nor to the Palestinian Authority, where Condi Rice is currently presiding over the latest reprise of the usual “peace process” clichés designed to persuade Israel to make concessions to a populace, which largely believes everything the al-Qaida guys do. The state-funded (which means European- and U.S.-taxpayer funded) Palestinian newspaper published a cartoon this September celebrating 9/11 as a great victory.
Perhaps we need more investment in jobs. Or maybe guns are too easily available in Gaza. Or, if guns aren’t, self-detonating school kids certainly are. This is the ultimate asymmetric warfare: we’re trying to beat back ideology with complacent Western assumptions. Not a good bet.
well, Saddam is a head of state and Iraq is a sovereign nation
The case could be made that an illegitimate despot that maintains power via murder & torture is fair game. I'll grant you that the Dems are saying the same thing about Bush (deluded, of course). In addition, after his invasion of Kuwait & the subsequent war he lost any claim he might have had to demand respect for his sovereignty. In this world, when you lose a war, the victor makes the rules.
I do agree with your comments regarding the fancy verbal footwork used to define the so called WOT. As in most cases, if you are afraid to openly define the problem and state clear goals, your results are going to be disappointing. In this case the constant verbal appeasement of Islam by weak leaders in the west indicates a serious lack of will. I include the Bush administration, its repeated mealy mouthed remarks on radical (hmm, that's redundant) Islam prove to me there is not a serious, long term, defined commitment to fighting terrorism. The most obvious example of this is the deliberate refusal to use any sort of profiling and in the process harrassing our own citizens and restricting our freedoms in order to placate disgruntled Islamics.