Posted on Sun, Oct. 01, 2006

One Last Thing | Post-9/11 conflicts rooted in history
It's not just Afghanistan, Iraq and a "war on terror." It's the 
West vs. the Islamic world, a clash that has never abated.
By Jonathan Last

Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration labeled the conflict into which it
plunged this country the "war on terror." But this is no more descriptive 
than calling the fight in Iraq a "war on IEDs." The more pressing question 
is: Are we, or are we not, engaged in a larger clash of civilizations?

If the answer is "We are," the clash long predates 9/11, the wars in Iraq 
and Afghanistan, and George W. Bush. It predates America itself. It is a 
clash between Western civilization and the Islamic world.

[... ...]

"The war with Israel is not about a treaty, a cease-fire agreement,
Sykes-Picot borders, national zeal, or disputed borders," Ayman al-
Zawahiri explained this year. "It is rather a jihad for the sake of
God until the religion of God is established."

Zawahiri, of course, is an al-Qaeda leader. But the views of other
Islamic leaders sound similar.

"Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan is
absolute," Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah said in 2002. "Death to
America will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan."

Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaimed in 2005: "[We] will soon
experience a world without the United States, and Zionism and will
breathe in the brilliant time of Islamic sovereignty over today's
world."

[... ...]

If we accept that this is a clash between civilizations, two questions
face us: How does this change our thinking? And the painful one: What
do we do about it?

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Full article at "Philadelphia Enquirer"
www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/special_packages/sunday_review/15648243.htm

Cheers, Steve..

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