Replies

Anyone who has faced an Al-Qaeda type organization will know that they must lose. Their principal weakness is what Spengler accounts as their strength: their extreme ruthlessness and nihilism. American popular culture discovered radical Islam belatedly. Before the the World Trade Center, there was Iran, Algeria, Aceh, Timor, Mindanao, Jammu and Kashmir and Afghanistan itself. But no one sat up and noticed, because they were only killing wogs.

Hundreds of thousands of Third World citizens have died at the hands of radical Islamists and they've generated a backlash all their own. Iran is a case in point. The mullahs are a spent force. The Afghans hate the Taliban, and given enough time, will kill them off. You only have to travel to the Mollucas to know that the Jehad boys are facing their own Vietnam. And do you remember the Bamian Buddhas? The Jehad boys want to take on the world. Injustice and intolerance for all is their watchword, and resistance and revenge will be the common riposte.

Spengler needn't worry that the West's will to fight radical Islamism will flag. Al-Qaeda will supply the goad. A blown nuclear reactor here, an anthrax attack there, a schoolhouse full of children with their throats cut thrown in for good measure, will ensure that we will look back on September 11, 2001 as the "good old days".

Al-Qaeda's entire repertoire consists soley of the drumbeat of death. In their universe, homes are principally useful for burying homosexuals alive and it will not occur to them to employ shavers for any other purpose than slitting someone's throat.

We are in the early days yet. Al-Qaeda has taught the world fear; now it will teach them to hate.