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The author speaks like a typical Westerner. There was never at time when Islam was at the forefront of social or cultural development. The vaunted Islamic culture of the middle ages was stolen from the Roman Empire (during the Christian phase Westerners like to call the "Byzantine Empire" to deny its continuity with the Roman Empire). Until it was extinguished by Islam, the Empire and its capital Constantinople, The City, it was usually called, were the beacon of social and cultural development for the whole world.

Barbarous folk, Vikings, as-yet-unChristianized Bulgars, Avars, Crusaders and Muslims all flocked to Constantinople as moths to a candle, until weakened by the Crusaders it fell to the Ottoman Turks. The City was a haven to Saxon exiles from the Norman conquest, had tolerant policies toward religious minorities more generous than the dhimmitude offered by Islam, had hospitals, a university, homes for the aged, the poor, and for reformed prostitutes. The arts flourished, for contrary to what Western art historian taught, classical knowledge of perspective and form were preserved in the secular art of the Empire. Indeed, the stylized forms of iconography could not exist without a knowledge of perspective, and the deliberate choice to send a spiritual message by reversing perspective so that the viewer is the vanishing point, and that which is beyond the icon, visually the background, but noetically the spiritual realm to which the icon points is larger. It is from the Empire that both the Muslims and the Western rennaisance derived their knowledge of classical antiquity. The Muslims did not preserve classical antiquity, rather they destroyed its last outpost.

The only significant contributions Islamic culture gave to the world are some poetry (mostly by authors whose sect of Islam was persecuted by the main body of Islam), some non-representational art and algebra. Even the latter is simply the result of having a very smart man who saw how to put the numeration system stolen from the Hindus together with the knowledge of Diophantine equations lifted from the Christian Roman Empire.

While critics have called his remarks "unacceptable," "barbaric," "silly," and — of course — "racist," I am at a loss to find a single untrue word in his remarks

Yep.
We all thought that Brave New World and 1984 addressed western civilization, right?
I have never seen better examples of "doublespeak" than this...

And yes, I also am waiting for the Muslims to point out which part of those statements is not true.

"[A]nd just because the Taliban is a harsh unintended consequence of that support, doesn't mean we should have held the door open for Soviet expansionism. Does it?"

Yes, it does. Russia has always been at war with Islam. Just because there happened to be Communists in the Kremlin does not alter the justice of Russia's cause. They also imprisoned murderers and rapists in the USSR. Should we have sided with common felons just because they were enemies of the Soviet government?

The West has been engaged in a life and death struggle with aggressive Islam since Mohammed's psychopathic homicidal vermin galloped out of their desert to destroy Christian civilisation in North Africa. Until now, America has been spared the tender mercies of Islam because we do not have a significant indigenous Islamic community, nor do we border any Islamic states. Now, after 9/11, we Americans have been fully initiated into The West. We have joined the same club as the Byzantine Empire, Russia, Hungary, Austria, Serbia, Greece, Spain, Italy, and France. They have all, at some time, been targeted by Jihad. Their lands were invaded, their citizens massacred, their churches desecrated, and their children sold into slavery.

Russia has know this at first hand. The U.S., blinded by ideological and geo-political categories, simply assumed that the war in Afganistan and the rebellion in Chechnya were purely political struggles. They are not; they are part of an ongoing agenda of world domination that will not end until the last Jihadist is safely planted.

"We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilization, which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion."

There are no errors in this statement. Berlusconi spoke the truth. Islamists should examine this statement closely and undertake some serious self-examination. Otherwise that which the Islamists loath the most - Western domination - will be their fate. Continued Islamic violence against things Western will only bring Western violence on response. And this battle the Islamists won't win.