<Most Muslim fundamentalists are no different than Christian ones >
We haven't settled on an agreed lexicon, so we often say one thing, and it gets read as something else. The term "Islamist" or "violent Muslim Fundamentalist" is better than the too-broad "Muslim Fundamentalist".
Saddam Hussain is not a terrorist, doesn't harbor them, and the drug-addict analogy I made, isn't for him. He is a violence-prone dictator, in charge of a nation-state. As I've said, I think we should handle him, the way we handled Stalin and Mao, by Containment and Deterence. Trying to pre-emptively keep WMD out of the hands of every regime who is violence-prone, is a hopelessly ambitious task. If we make that our policy, it will disastrously backfire, sooner or later. If you try to snatch the grenades out of the hands of all the other astronauts, one of them will go off and ruin Spaceship Earth; you have to find a better way.
<Utter defeat can work>
Yes, I'm afraid that's what we'll try, first. And when it doesn't work, then maybe we'll try something else, something a little less radical, less ambitious. I'm afraid my nation is going to have to suffer a defeat on the order of Vietnam, before we start dealing with the Islamists in an effective way. We can win this war, but not using the methods now being tried. |
