Poo-Pooing the Terrorist Threat
John Derbyshire thinks we give too much credit to the jihadis. This is not WW IV, he claims. Comparing the ware against Islamic fascists to the Cold War is absurd:

The U.S.A. is not threatened with destruction by jihadists. Our “entire security as a nation” was indeed threatened by the U.S.S.R, by their vast armies, by (later) their ICBMs, and indeed by the social and economic system they promoted which, though it seems absurd to us now, was taken to be seriously competitive with our own at the time Kennan was writing. Our security as a nation is not threatened by jihadis, unless we are such fools as to let them get hold of a nation with some modern industrial infrastructure, and embark on a program of nuclear weapons development. Even then they would threaten us only to the degree they felt inclined to an act of certain national suicide.

Islamofascism is a nasty thing. It will kill many more of us before we see the back of it. It will bring down some nations, too: Chad, perhaps, possibly even Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. These are not consequential nations, though, neither militarily, nor economically, nor culturally, and they pose no threat to us.

We should hunt down and kill jihadis wherever we can find them. If they get their hands on a nation, we should strive to help them keep that nation at the dust-bowl level of development, and free of training camps or major military capability. Those are simple matters of national prudence. To speak of these commonplace exercises in gunship diplomacy as Norman Podhoretz (echoing [George F.] Kennan) does, in terms of a sacred mission assigned to us by Providence, is to engage in gross and absurd flattery of some small gangs of lunatics who have no appeal outside the most backward parts of the world, and whose very beliefs disqualify them from creating any state competitive with us in any way.

Links added.

I'm not sure I agree with Derbyshire, the jihadis are dedicated to the destruction of Western values every bit as much as their Communist grandparents. While he may be right about the West being ultimately able to defeat them, the real question is whether the West has the will to fight. Of that, I'm not sure.
- posted by Base10 @ 3:06 PM