"Fjordman" over at The Gates Of Vienna says that we didn't win the Cold War decisively enough, and it makes it harder to fight the new form of anti-Enlightenment totalitarianism represented by Jihad. We still haven't put the wooden stake through the heart of Marxism.

[Via Mars Blog]

[Update in the afternoon]

Here are some related thoughts on multi-culturalism and how it will kill us as well, if we let it, from the preface of Ayann Hirsi Ali's new book.

Rand, who says this:

Islamic terrorism is explained as caused by “poverty, oppression and marginalization,” a classic, Marxist interpretation.

except people on the Right looking to strawman the Left?

Poverty and hopelessness no more "causes" Islamic terror than warm water "causes" a hurricane. bin Laden after all comes from a wealthy privileged Saudi family.

That said, nut-jobs like bin Laden can manipulate people who are poorly educated, and otherwise poor or feeling hopeless including alienated Brit and Canadian Islamic youth attracted by the false glories of jihad.

Poverty and hopelessness no more "causes" Islamic terror than warm water "causes" a hurricane. bin Laden after all comes from a wealthy privileged Saudi family.

We know that, Bill. Tell your friends on the left, because many of them were saying after 911 that the "root causes" were poverty and globalism. It's no straw man, even if you're smarter than that.

Thanks for the link!

I'd like to say that I wrote the essay, but I didn't; it's by the great Norwegian blogger, Fjordman. He has chosen not to be a contributor at Gates of Vienna, which means that he sends his guest-posts to me, and I post them for him. That's why they have my byline, although I credit him at the top of the post.

I wish I could claim credit for such fine work, but I can't!

If you could change your post to attribute the piece to Fjordman, we'd both appreciate it.

My take is that anything that grows to be a threat to the collective freedom of the world won't die easily. So yes, we didn't win decisively enough. We probably won't win decisively enough against militant Islam to keep the holdovers from endorsing the next great threat either. There are few pure victories out there.