I'm only going to say this once. History is unfolding more rapidly than ever. The world is becoming interconnected. This is good, it works to eliminate poverty and create individual rights.
At this juncture, large parts of the world remain fiercely unconnected and it is precisely those areas where almost all the world's war and violence (and terrorism) take place. Gradually those areas, including the Islamic world, need to be brought along. Young muslims need opportunities other than the opportunity to strike out against symbols of western culture for there to be any peace.
The thugacracies of the middle east have a future they want to create. It's an ugly one for 90% of their people and a desperate one for women. The connected world has a future we want to create as well, and the jihadists exist to hold back that inevitable tide. Their old world is over and they are doomed. But they are going to go down fighting, and if they could they would push the whole world back to the dark ages.
It's not about america (for once) and it's sure not about Bush or Cheney or Obama. It's about two worlds in clash and the upheavals that happens in such clashes. We have to get the whole world into the 21st century, or at least the 20th. The same dynamic happened in the civil war. We had two cultures in conflict, one rapidly modernizing brimming with individual opportunity, and one lost in the feudal past with no innovation, stagnating. The stragglers have to be brought along, kicking and screaming at times.
