[RoosterRedux]

I liked W as a man too, but when he came out and said "islam is a religion of peace"...I knew we had just lost our first battle in this long war.

If you can't honestly define the enemy, you can't win the war.

Even Obama knows this, which is why he refuses to permit anyone in his administration to use the term "radical islam" (and, of course, we know, it isn't radical islam anyway...it's just islam).

[wayoverontheright]

I liked W as a man too, but when he came out and said "islam is a religion of peace"...I knew we had just lost our first battle in this long war.

Same here.

I've always wondered how it might have turned out had we framed our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq as punitive and retributive, instead of defensive and altruistic.

Our enemy would have understood that, and more respect would have been the result. We should have gone in angry, and unabashed about being so.

Trump said "we should have taken their oil". Hmmm....I think he gets it.

[LS]

I agree. When we (Victor Hanson, John Keegan, and I) met with him in 2006, we stressed this. Temporarily he began using “Islamofascism” (which I think Hanson suggested), but shortly after that, drifted back into the ROP language.