DAVID WARREN WRITES that those who say we’re embarked on an unending war are wrong:

For, contrary to the most pessimistic assessments, we will be able to know when the war against terrorism has been won. It will be when we see a phenomenon sweeping the Middle East, equivalent to what swept Central and Eastern Europe in the years 1989-91. (Though we may yet see the contrary in the meantime — Islamists overthrowing governments in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.)

We are dealing with an enemy that is defeatable, but which is not small. And we are dealing with entrenched attitudes that penetrate far more deeply into Muslim society than into the societies that were freed in Central and Eastern Europe. There was in these latter, after all, no one left who genuinely believed in Communism. In the Islamic world there are great masses of people who genuinely believe in the most bellicose interpretation of the old Muslim concept of “jihad” or holy war. Dead or alive, Osama bin Laden does command armies of millions of sympathizers, people living an apocalyptic fantasy.

But we have faced that kind of thing before. The Nazis were living an apocalyptic fantasy; so were the fascists of Mussolini’s Italy, and the emperor-cultists of Tojo’s Japan. In many ways, the antebellum U.S. South once fell into such a collective fantasy, and behaved aggressively in a like way. Such enemies were never going to be won over by reason or negotiation, and every proposal for appeasement strengthened their hand. . . .

That is the hard fact of life. Only the infantile narcissism in so much of the post-modern West prevents us from seeing it plain.

Yet there are still appeasers out there, driven in large part by what Diane E. describes as anger against effectuality. At least, anger against Western effectuality.

For some similar thoughts, see this post from OxBlog.

UPDATE: NEXIS OF EVIL: Richard Bennett hits an antiwar (er, and antilogging, and anti-meat, and, well, you get the idea) activist where it hurts.