Hugh Fitzgerald over at Jihad Watch is amazed at the cluelessness of the people in charge of Middle East policy in Washington:
I’m amazed — aren’t you? — that more than eight years after the 9/11/2001 attacks we still have people in Washington who do not have a grasp of Islam, do not understand what Islam has to do with the Arab war on Israel, why any further perceived Arab or Muslim victories will whet, not sate, Arab and Muslim appetites, who do not understand the simple concept of divide et impera, and of how we can exploit to our advantage the sectarian, ethnic, and economic hostilities and resentments that could divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam.
I don’t fully agree with everything Fitzgerald says in the article, which is very much worth reading, but I do fully share his amazement. What will it take for our elites to begin a serious study of Islam? If not 9/11, what? If Europe is any guide, they never will.
“What will it take for our elites to begin a serious study of Islam?”
Study or no study, opposition is the best course.
In many of the books I’ve read on the 1930s, the authors note the ease at which Communists became Nazis (and, presumably, in 1940s, vice-versa).
The beliefs of our elite are uncomfortably close to Islam already: the caste-like hierarchy (affirmative action for our elites; the moslem-dhimmi division in Islam), the color symbolism (green), the power of women (released in our elites; suppressed in Islam) and; the self-justification for rule (because our elites alone can save the planet; because God appointed Muslims rulers).