Hey, kids, if you’re looking for me, I’ll be playing the soprano saxophone on the sidewalk outside Madison Square Garden. Drop a buck in my case, will ya?
“West Has Already Won War with Islam, Says Leading Geopolitical Analyst,” by Aaron Task in Newsmakers, April 30 (thanks to Freckles):
With the Taliban on the march in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden still unaccounted for, attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq rising again and Afghanistan a quagmire, it would seem the war against jihadist Islam is only accelerating in intensity.
But what if it’s already all over but the shouting?
“It is debatable whether the U.S. has actually won the U.S.-jihadist war – but it has certainly achieved its strategic goals,” – preventing another 9/11 and avoiding jihadist uprising in the Arab world, George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR, writes in his latest book The Next 100 Years. “The U.S. has succeeded, not so much in winning the war as in preventing the Islamists from winning and, from a geopolitical perspective, that is good enough.”
Friedman expands up this theory in the accompany video, where we discuss the following:
* What he calls the “fundamental weakness” of the Muslim world.
* The likely endgame in Afghanistan, where he says the U.S. “cannot win.”
* The potential for a jihadist uprising in Turkey, which Friedman sees as one of the great regional powers of the 21st Century.
* The likelihood of Pakistan falling into Taliban control, if it hasn’t already.
* The “real” meaning of Iran’s rhetorical threats.
* Whether Bin Laden is better captured and put on trial, dead, or alive and isolated. And whether Al Qaeda is still able to carry out major terrorist attacks today.