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war terms

A big part of the War on Terror, as several posters have pointed out, is that the phrase is too inexact. "Terror" is not an ideology; it's a pattern of using the civilian massacre as the tactic of choice. That tactic is nothing new; it's been characteristic of fanatic but disadvantaged fringe movements since time immemorial. In the service of a powerful state apparatus, the death tolls can become truly awesome. It's arguable that Stalin's version of communism, for instance, was state-sponsored terror. Even though the Communist Party never won a general election, their dedicated minority seized power in a politically primitive country and combined the worst of two worlds -- a semi-feudal, autocratic, political tradition with the surveillance and killing machines of the 20th century.

The ideology motivating Middle Eastern "terror"
is militant Islam -- again, nothing new. Islam has been at war with much of the rest of the world since its inception. Although it had a heyday 1200 years ago, for the most part it's been the most intolerant, most trigger happy of religions. It's been a seesaw struggle between Islam and the surrounding infidels for most of the last 1400 years.

This is not to say that many Muslims are not peaceful. Neither is the Muslim world monolithic. Shiites and Sunnis are mutually hostile, and the Ottoman Turks, who dominated the Middle East for several hundred years prior to their defeat in WW I, have different political, military and dynastic traditions. Turkey in the mid-20th century was the only Muslim country in that area to modernize intentionally, and for the most part successfully.

There is little tradition of pluralism and moderation within the core area of Islam, particularly Iran and the Arab Middle East. Most of the various militant sects there also riven by tribalism and seem to hate modernism in a general sort of way; thereby representing the most retrograde form of militant Islam.

Trying to convince American liberals that any war is worth fighting is probably as useless as attempting to convince Wahabis that Western greedheads and voluptaries aren't minions of the devil. The American left never seems to support the war that's actually happening -- only some other war in the distant future, even if it might antagonize Arabs. Local newspapers where I live run full-page ads to "Save Darfur;" there are even billboards here and there, but of course they fail to mention that the only way to "save" that area would be to occupy Sudan, the largest country in Africa with about 40 million people scattered over an area about the size of the U.S. east of the Mississippi. Such a mission would require an American army many times the size of the one in Iraq.

Those same liberals are not apt to find military force truly justifiable until a jihadist army wades ashore on Long Island.