If you had a neighbor who was yelling Olaf Hackbar and declared Geehawd from the roof, would it be sane to give him your weapons because the HOA said so?
We live in a bizarre world. God help us.
I’ve only known Middle Easterners who were in America as students, neighbors, business associates and fellow employees. That’s probably not a representative sample as they all spoke English, and most had been here a long time. But every chance I got I learned their views. The Jihadists are mostly the lower classes. In my experience they live in a world of literal and unteachable ignorance. They believe in magic...saying something makes it true or real. This is every Palestinian I met with one exception. This is the student radicals who brought the Ayatollah to power. The upper-class Turks and Iranians I met, and class means educated, sophisticated but not necessarily wealthy, were very much like the average American.
President Erdogan of Turkey once said something to the effect, “Freedom is a bus you ride to the destination and then get off.” Meaning he wants to be president for life, and he has wiped out the opposition so he can pull it off. His views on religion are like any politician who says whatever he thinks will play well but he has no personal connection with religion. Think the Clintons but with fifty percent less sleaze. He wants to make Turkey a regional hegemon, but he has not been hyper aggressive about it. Evidence is he won’t invade Greece which he could have done at any point. Any time he needs support from the street he sounds religious and moves into Syria and makes a lot of noise. Think of Bill Clinton who bombed an aspirin factory anytime the news was about to release anything embarrassing.
There are two ways to keep the lid on the Middle East without using American muscle. Put Iran in charge, the Obama solution and put Turkey in charge, the solution for rationalists. Are they the perfect solution? No, but neither is us policing the area for the rest of eternity.
That three pounds of plastique in the nose cone will last for years awaiting a detonator signal from a NASA satellite.