Committee on the Present Danger

In an echo from the Cold War past, US neoconservatives have started a new Committe for the Present Danger.  Its :mission is to educate the American people about the threat posed by a global Islamist terror movement; to counsel against appeasement and accommodation with terrorists; and to build support for a strategy of decisive victory against this menace not only to the United States, but to democracy and freedom everywhere."

The problem with this, besides being racist, is that it is purely one-sided.  It takes a simplistic (me good, you bad) moral absolutist position, much like the moral absolutist position that bin Laden and his ilk take.  It will not end the war on terror; in fact, it will proliferate it. 

There is no moral high ground in the modern world.  Fundamentalists on both sides have attacked the other side without justification.  A hardening of the Western ideologues' psotion will ensure a hardening of the Islamic fundamentalists position.  This will not bring us closer to solution; it will exercerbate the problem.  The solution is global attempts to understand the other, and to try to heal and reconcile. 

See Jim Lobe's article on this new committee.