It isn't a war, it is a debate. The weapons are not tanks or guns, they are ethos, pathos and logos. These are the three means debaters, public speakers have to change the opinion of others, to win in the battlefield of the mind. Until that battle is won no occupation of the ground can guarantee peace or safety.
A rather remarkable attitude of many in the United States lately is that killing terrorists is the answer to the problem. The remarkable thing is that the same people believe the response to American deaths should be a firmer resolve to kill terrorists. Do you see the contradiction? If killing Americans strengthens their resolve to kill terrorists then shouldn't killing terrorists strengthen their resolve to kill Americans? It would seem logical. Didn't someone once define insanity as doing the same thing and expecting different results? The truth is that killing either Americans or terrorists in no way wins anything. It is a battlefield of the mind, and in that battlefield killing just increases the losses on both sides. The debate is not won because killing is not a tool of debate.
The source of the problem is a cultural difference, Muslims have a culture and Americans do not. Please pardon that is not a good joke, but it does somewhat describe the reality and the problem. Islam is a well established ethical system with a firm foothold in the world. Young Muslims can be won by the ethos appeal. Meanwhile America has abandoned the ethos appeal. Any appeal to an established system of ethics is rejected as "unscientific" or as introducing "religion into politics." The proponents of this say not to worry, they have logic. The truth is that it is not really "logical" to reject the condensed wisdom of the ages in ethical systems, rather it is the current bias of too many Americans to reject such wisdom. They do so because of cultural inversion. The cities filled with "have-nots" who not only had no means of production, but had weak or no traditions or values. Because historically the city dwellers were smarter or at least better educated or read than others, the late arrivals assumed they were smarter as well and more "scientific" than the "ill-read, superstitious country folk." Their mistake is explained in great detail and with much substantiation throughout this website. The ethical systems that survived the ages did so because they believed in marriage and not whatever it is homosexuals have lately been granted. The ethical systems that survived the ages did so because they had a substantial set of values.
The city dwellers of today have developed such a faith in their "science" that nothing in the past has value. For them it is not what survived the ages but what the most people want to do today which, not surprisingly considering the source, is to reject the wisdom of the ages.
When a court ruling some time ago gave local governments the power to seize land for private use, how did that happen? Is it perhaps that respect for property was part of an ethical system, one we have abandoned? A system abandoned for whatever is the whim of the most people at some brief moment in time?
So who will win the "battle"? The Muslims win on the ethos appeal, Americans haven't even tried on that one in decades. The Americans bank on the logos appeal, but theirs turns out to be a serious overdraft, and the Muslims win there as well. That leaves the pathos appeal. With America's vast wealth and power it isn't likely to win much pity, so the Muslims win that one as well. Can we call the eventual winner now?
As Americans fly from marriage to marriage and property to property guided only by some inner impetuous child can they really expect to sit as teachers to an established ethical system as strong as Islam? The answer is no.
Our fate is not in the hands of our soldiers or generals. Our fate is in the hands of our debaters, teachers and political and religious leaders. It matters more what our public speakers say than what the military does. It matters more how you govern yourselves than how you try to govern others. Too many of you are believing and saying the wrong things.
Islam is not some anachronism. Muslims are every bit as scientific, mathematical, logical, sensible and rational as anyone else. There are terrorists because there are bad people in their society, it does not however prove that there are more bad people in their society than in ours.
The majority will win, in the end the majority always wins, but it will be a majority who establishes
laws and keeps them. It will be a majority who can point to system that has survived centuries, not just weekends. It will be a majority who can win the debate, not just the ground.