@ George Jochnowitz:
Well, that’s what makes Hamastan a true jihadi state. Death is its raison d’être.

When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar.

When is a state not a state? When other states don’t recognize its existence? Perhaps that means Kosovo is not a state. But what about Israel, which is not recognized by some countries but is recognized by others.

What about when a state doesn’t recognize itself as a state? That’s the case with Gaza. Gaza could have agreed to live in peace with Israel. It could have tried to establish diplomatic relations with other states, which would have been overjoyed to recognize it. The world would have showered Gaza with money. But an independent Palestinian state, no matter how tiny, would have been a partial legitimization of Israel’s right to exist. Hamas always chooses what it thinks of as virtue–dying in a battle against Israel–over such practical trivia as life, wealth, or independence.

@ Peter Shalen:
Not to belabor the point, but I’d say that Gaza is a borderline case – or anyway that Hamas’ definition of Jihad is more narrowly focused, for now, than AQ’s, and that Gaza doesn’t quite qualify as a “state.” And there’s still a huge difference between gaining occasional sponsorship from, or infiltrating, a state apparatus, and controlling a country.

Anyway, I think we agree on the bottom line.

@ CK MacLeod:
Gaza is a de facto jihadi state. Iran fully supports jihadis. In Saudi Arabia the establishment supports them, although the government officially does not. Countries like Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey have been flirting with them in varying degrees while hedging their bets.

I suppose that in any war the ultimate goal has to be to persuade people that it’s not in their interest to support the enemy. If your essential point is that declaring ourselves in opposition to Islam as a religion would be detrimental to that goal, then I agree.

@ Howard Portnoy:
I believe that in Canada the straightforward term “aboriginal” is standard.

I know it’s been written about before, but imagine if George W. Bush had had a planned speaking engagement and a horror like Ft. Hood occurred and instead of immediately addressing that Bush read through his prepared remarks, including a “shout-out” to someone in the audience, medal of honor or not!

Btw, I don’t know about TGL, but I’m a native American, as were my parents — born and bred on US soil. I believe it was my industry (el-hi publishing) that invented the odious PC construction “Native American” to refer to American Indians.

I hope that future domestic blood baths like Ft. Hood do not lead to sweeping restrictions on what people say are peaceful, law abiding Muslims.

However all the PC crap has got to cease. Somebody like this bozo should have been drummed out of the military a long time ago. We all need to be more watchful, more careful.

I thought Texas allowed trained marksmen with clean records to carry. Where were they at Ft. Hood a few days back? I think the right to carry should be nationwide, as long as those who carry have clean records and thorough training. It could start with ex military and civilian police officers, FBI, Marshalls, etc, and could then extend to ex military, with clean records of course.

@ Peter Shalen:
Maybe, but I’m not sure that you actually do “win” a war against extremist Jihad itself. There’s no conventional victory against an unconventional enemy – which isn’t the same as saying that there are no “victories” in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, just that victory doesn’t mean the permanent, total, and irreversible eradication of Jihadist sentiment. There will probably always be Jihadis just like there are still Nazis and even Japanese imperialists, not to mention Communists. There is no Nazi or Imperial Way state, and Soviet-style Communism has all but disappeared as a potential peer-level threat – but the Jihadis don’t have a state at all, for now. (Iran’s a different breed of cat.)

What you can attempt to do is prevent them from gaining state power or state sponsors, reduce the level and frequency of violence, make it more difficult for them to recruit and organize effectively, etc. Rigorous anti-Muslim measures would greatly tend to make those objectives more difficult to achieve – and would tend to equate with or lead to the worldwide conflagration that Jihadis dream of. To the extent it would provide them with their clearest path to influence, destabilizing a series of vulnerable regimes, radicalizing sympathizers, denying us allies, etc., it qualifies as the major objective that we need to deny them.

It’s our principal objective in this struggle also because it aligns with our larger strategic objectives.

In other words, winning the unconventional war amounts to the same thing as preventing it from rising to the level of a true threat to our vital interests. I think that qualifies as the principal objective, but I’m open to being convinced otherwise.

CK MacLeod wrote:
I’d say it was a principal objective of AQ to instigate a world war between Crusaders and Muslims. It’s our principal objective to prevent that from happening, and to keep the war between us and terrorists…

I think saying this is “our principal objective” is an exaggeration. Keeping the war between us and the terrorists is surely important, but winning the war against the terrorists is equally important.

@ CK MacLeod:

I just returned from an outing during which it struck me that the problem is even more scary than I thought. I’ll look for J.E.’s NZ piece.

For the nonce, as a Ltjg I stood inport watches as OOD on the DD and a DE while tied up dockside. Wore a .45 while the messenger of the watch had only a nightstick. Of course, I thought nothing of him walking around behind me with that nightstick. This while the whole rest of the ship was asleep. As Navigator I didn’t know much about the security of the magazines; but the messenger could be a Weapons Department Seaman or PO3 who knew at least some; and the Ensign and JG in the Weaps department, who stood lonely night in port watches like me, almost surely knew all.

But a DD has only tens of tons of ordnance. Why not think big? In Enterprise which also ties up dockside and carries more than a thousands tons of ordnance there are Ensigns and JGs with responsibility for magazines and lots of expertise about what not to do around ordnance.