Wolfowitz has been muzzled. Rumsfeld is sounding more and more like Powell, with his talk about a prolonged "Cold War" type engagement with terrorist and sponsoring states. We're publicly scolding Israel, while coddling corrupt tyrants like the Saudi's. I don't like the sound of this at all.
We were destined to win the Cold War. Our ideas, our demographics, and our economies were all in ascent vis a vis the Communist world. The Communists themselves were fundamentally rationalist, nearly always choosing life over ideology. We knew that if we could simply present a strong enough front to prevent a direct assault, we would inevitably win a war of attrition.
This is not so against the Islamic world. They are growing in numbers and in wealth. They are conquering more territory every year. They draw on a 1500 year old Abrahamic tradition rather than a 100 year old German economic theory.
Meanwhile, the West is in decline. We have turned away from our Abrahamic values in favor of a Davos-driven secular materialism. Our populations are shrinking. Our share of wealth is diminishing versus Asia and the rest of the world. In short, the massive disequilibrium of Western power vs. the rest of the world that has characterized the last 200 years or so is beginning to correct itself.
And our leaders are guiding us to a new "Cold War?" Such a war of attrition does NOT favor us anymore. We have the tools and the power today to end Islamic power decisively. 50 years from now--even 10 years from now--that may not be the case.
I think about how different the world might be had the Western allies pushed beyond Germany into Russia after WWII. Would the world have been spared the horrors of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the terror of the nuclear doomsday watch? Nobody back then could have known what would happen in the next 50 years. We, however, don't have that excuse. I don't want my children to have to grow up doing biological and chemical weapons drills in their schools because our leadership today lacked the steel to do what nees to be done.