Tigerhawk, who said some very nice things about me this weekend, made a point that I often see repeated, but rarely challenged. So let's challenge:
Oh how I wish there were Democrats who seemed genuinely to grasp that the Islamic jihadis and their allies and abettors represent a lethal strategic challenge to the West, including especially the United States. Sometimes they teeter in that direction, but usually only to posture on the right of the Bush administration on some matter of popular attention and no actual significance, such as the Dubai ports deal. It is intensely frustrating to me that only the Republicans have a strategy for national security that does not reek of apology for who we are and what we stand for. Who are the American nationalists in the Democratic Party?
Generally speaking, the left's riposte to this line of inquiry is sincere assurance that we grasp the enormity of the threat and will fund port security or whatever (which I damn sure hope we will). Nevertheless, what is this "lethal strategic challenge" to the West? Bin Laden and friends are dangerous, sure, but they pose a lethal threat to a certain subset of folks living in various urban centers, not "the West."
Conversely, the Soviet Union had the weaponry and delivery capabilities to annihilate the continental US, and in fact the world, many times over. That was a lethal threat. Bin Laden, so far as we know, hasn't proved able to obtain the fissile material for a small bomb, much less enough of them to wipe us out. And if Tigerhawk is referring to the West as an ideological concept, an accumulation of values and attitudes, then I fear he vastly underestimates the robustness and inevitability of liberalism.
Historically, anti-modern crusaders don't fare so well, and bin Laden is regressive even for his base. Communism was a danger because it was intuitively attractive, but, upon implementation, eventually catastrophic. It had a constituency, and the trick was syncing the system's disastrous effects to its glowing promises. Islamic law, by contrast, is not nearly so appealing as to threaten us through organic adoption, I know of few women looking to give up tank tops, and fewer men looking to give up razors. Nor is it supported by armies strong enough to invade the West and impose its tenets. We are, I'd argue, safe in the macro sense, if not always in the micro.
Tigerhawk, I would guess, remains unconvinced by this analysis. The question I'd like to see him answer is why.
