James Lileks:
It comes down to this: Islam is being defined in the popular mind by three forces: the radicals who kill, the PR-savvy activists who protest, and the officials who cave. The aggregate effect does not produce good will.
Yes, that’s exactly right. The barbaric and outrageous actions (whatever their motivation) of the fundamentalist Islamic radicals are seen by most Americans (and portrayed by the lamestream media) as something much more benign than they actually are. And somehow the spectacular (by any historical standard) successes of our military are almost unknown to the populace. This dangerously warped perception is, I’m afraid, on the verge of controlling how we prosecute the war on terror. Even more frightening: it seems plausible that the only thing that will change this is another successful attack by the enemy. In this age of short attention spans, a deadly enemy seems to be perceived as such only if they kill, say, a few thousand Americans each year. And in this age of shallow, sound-bite “thinking,” the analysis of a disturbingly large segment of America seems to be limited to the latest pronouncement from their favorite promise-spouting, feel-good pol.
Read the whole thing.
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