Saving Face
David Ignatius has a column today called "Misreading the Enemy" that is basically about how radical Islam acts like gang members who have to "save face". No dissing allowed. His subheading is "what we don't grasp about Militant Islam".
But his whole column basically shows me that we grasp it completely. No new news here.
On Iran: We didn't get, that they didn't mean it. Yes we did. Which is why we don't bother to negotiate terms with them. Europe does. We don't. The UN does. We don't.
On Iraq: We supposedly don't get that al-Qaeda doesn't negotiate. I think we get that. We're there to kill them. We will "stand down" as the Iraqi's "stand up". We know full well that eventually they'll be able to protect themselves well enough to handle Zarqawi. We don't expect to kill every terrorist. Just enough to give them a chance.
On the govt. in Iraq: He thinks we don't know they aren't into compromise. And yet, guess who's compromising.
His premise is that we don't realize that radical Islam just wants to be respected. What he's missing is that by treating radical Islamists as grownups who CAN negotiate, who CAN work against terrorists, who CAN democratically run themselves without a dictator they are not being 'dissed'. In this manner they will grow up into how they are treated and then they WILL be respected by the world. Iraq is the example. And Bush's plan will work.
But his whole column basically shows me that we grasp it completely. No new news here.
On Iran: We didn't get, that they didn't mean it. Yes we did. Which is why we don't bother to negotiate terms with them. Europe does. We don't. The UN does. We don't.
On Iraq: We supposedly don't get that al-Qaeda doesn't negotiate. I think we get that. We're there to kill them. We will "stand down" as the Iraqi's "stand up". We know full well that eventually they'll be able to protect themselves well enough to handle Zarqawi. We don't expect to kill every terrorist. Just enough to give them a chance.
On the govt. in Iraq: He thinks we don't know they aren't into compromise. And yet, guess who's compromising.
His premise is that we don't realize that radical Islam just wants to be respected. What he's missing is that by treating radical Islamists as grownups who CAN negotiate, who CAN work against terrorists, who CAN democratically run themselves without a dictator they are not being 'dissed'. In this manner they will grow up into how they are treated and then they WILL be respected by the world. Iraq is the example. And Bush's plan will work.
posted by Terri at
5:25 AM
