“A long, rambling essay, startling for some of its neoconservative jargon,” sneers the Daily Times‘ Khalid Hasan, who is good at sneering.
WASHINGTON: “Our enemies have declared war on us, and their hatred cannot be sated. We will either defeat them, or they will come after us with the unsheathed sword,” says the White House.
In a long, rambling essay, startling for some of its neoconservative jargon, Peter Wehner of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, declares that the war against global jihadism will be long, with success and setbacks along the way, but the West must not grow impatient, nor withdraw from the fight. The enemy is “not Islam per se” but a global network of extremists driven by a twisted vision of Islam. “These jihadists are certainly a minority within Islam – but they exist, they are dangerous and resolute, in some places they are ascendant, and they need to be confronted and defeated,” he writes.
They are certainly a minority among Muslims, but they have the intellectual initiative all over the Islamic world today, precisely because they are able to argue successfully that their version of Islam is not twisted, but is the correct version — and peaceful Muslims have formulated no convincing theological response.