For all our technology and wealth, there's one advantage that the terrorists have over us: moral clarity. Sure, they're completely evil and insane, but at least they think they're right. Many of our leftists, like Chris Matthews, don't seem to get it (bolding mine).
Four years after 9/11 and the "crazy zeitgeist" that permeated the United States, most Americans have still not learned to know their enemies instead of just hating them, U.S. political journalist Chris Matthews says. ..."The period between 9/11 and Iraq was not a good time for America. There wasn't a robust discussion of what we were doing," Matthews said.
"If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we've given up. The person on the other side is not evil -- they just have a different perspective."
As Clayton Cramer points out, their "different perspective" is one that allows them "behead[] a bunch of teenaged girls because they attended a Christian school in Indonesia".
The bit about moral clarity is exactly why muslim moderates are so important. These people need to (and seem to be starting to) clearly say that suicide bombers go to Hell, that their enablers will go to Hell, and that no compulsion in religion includes not committing violence on those who leave Islam.
Once the vast bulk of Islam says this with a quiet, self assured moral clarity of their own, the islamists are doomed.
I have a volume on my shelves titled "The Official Politically Correct Dictionary," which prescribes the substitution of "morally different" for "evil." This entry is illustrated by a photo of Pol Pot, which is captioned: "Pol Pot, a morally different individual."
Verbum sat sapienti.
Their moral clarity is that they all go to hell, just that they hope that their actions of killing infidels will get them "rescued" by an approving god. See
http://www.islamreview.com/articles/waytoparadise.shtml
6Kings - Your formulation of islam would be a prescription for genocide (theirs) if muslims universally conceived of their religion in that way. The door should be left open for a sane islam that can coexist in the modern world. How many muslims walk through that door is up to them. The ones who won't, who insist on ritual humiliation of dhimmi and death to those who will not submit to islamic rule, those people are dead in the end.