WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: 9/11, Islam and War. “The greatest victory we have won in this war came on one of its most questionable battlefields: in Iraq. It was not a military victory, though it opened the door to military progress. It was a moral victory. And it was not something that Americans imposed on Muslims; it was a choice that Muslims made. . . . What those Sunni Arabs in Iraq came to understand is the basic truth of this conflict. The war unleashed nine years ago is not a clash of civilizations between Islam and the west. It is a clash between civilization and barbarism, and in that clash the Americans and true Muslims are on the same side.”