Your ‘bacteria’ analogy is a good one, except that what sometimes happens is that the two bacteria feed each other and mutate into a new form. There is no possibility whatsoever that the al Qaeda/Jihadist networks can defeat ‘the West’ militarily, however many atrocities they carry out. But the United States can lose this confrontation politically and also morally by entering into a futile and un-winnable ‘war’ that exhausts its resources and fatally undermines the democratic values it claims to represent. This is not a possibility that seems to concern the ‘full spectrum dominance’ wing of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. They need Al Qaeda and they need terrorism to justify a global projection of military power. Al Qaeda of course needs them to continue to engage in military ‘interventions’ in the Muslim world in order to justify its Zionist/Crusader thesis. So unfortunately I think this current mayhem has some time to run yet.
I have to ask the obvious question — and sorry that it is not more unique — but what is your next project going to be?
I’m currently writing a book about the expulsion of the Muslims from seventeenth-century Spain. It seems a very distant period of history, but after the events of the last few years, it’s a lot more contemporary than you might think.
Article comments
1 - Amy K
Interesting book though one would wish to learn more about what is behind terrorism. Even today, things are still getting out of hands. Obviously, it has to do with wealth vs poverty on a global basis. Maybe knowing about global political and economic map is more meaningful. For this, I recommend another great book: China and the new world order: how entrepreneurship, globalization, and borderless business are reshaping China and the world, by a chinese journalist named george zhibin gu, which offers a more realistic picture about changing world politics and business.