Islam - Al Qaeda jihad vs US long war

An interesting comparison by Paul Reynolds of the BBC.

In it he notes some declarations bin Laden made in his latest tape. Note this one in particular.

Iraq is the central struggle. "The epicentre of these wars and attacks is Baghdad"

Bush and bin Laden both know that, it's a shame the Democrats don't.

Paul also notes how wide ranging in nature bin Laden's declarations are and calls them "striking". They're not at all striking if he'd been paying attention to what's happening around the world or read my blog.

We are at war with militant Islam. Unless all Muslims want to be painted with that same brush they need to speak out and reform Islam.

Paul then lays out the US plan. In order to implement such a wide ranging shake up at the Pentagon, changes had to be made from top to bottom - changes some generals didn't like. Hence the attacks on Rumsfeld now that the generals are retired.

Paul has this to say at the end.

"And of course the lesson from the Cold War is that it was not won by military means, though military strength certainly played a key role. It was won by one system collapsing."

More precisely one state collapsing - the Soviet Union.

Such is not the case in the war against militant Islam. We are not fighting one state with several supporting states. We are fighting a religion planted in many states. As Paul notes...

The document does allude to this at the end by stating: "The United States will not win the war on terrorism... by military means... simultaneous, effective interaction with civilian populations will be essential to achieve success."

In other words, we have to work on getting Muslims to reform Islam, have governments stop appeasing Muslims, admit multiculturalism doesn't work and rid the media of left wing Islamic supporting propagandists - like the BBC.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------