The DPW deal seems to have done something which needed doing: expose some serious flaws on the right side of the political spectrum. I called the isolationists Chickenhawks for not being able to stand next to an Arab businessman while they supported sending troops into the Middle East to arm, train and fight by Arab freedom fighters (the real ones, not the Michael Moore mythololgy).

Rich Lowry came up with a better term: the-hell-with-them hawks. The term describes those who have surrendered on the idea of bringing the Middle East into the modern world. These folks have quit and given up and have no interest in trying anymore. Rich has also perfectly described the context of our battle:

“The contemporary Middle East has featured a competition of radicalisms – who can be religiously purer, and more hostile to the West? The project in Iraq is an attempt to shift the terms of the competition to who can better deliver peace, prosperity and representation.”

And that competition includes America and Americans. When combined with the waste byproduct of the DPW deal we see two factions competing here in the US: one group seeing who can raise the most alarms about Muslims and Arabs in America, and one competing to seperate and isolate Islamists from the broader Muslim community while reaching out to that broader community to follow our path. Not the path of the Islamists.

Liken this competition to how the ancients dealt with Lepers and their enforced isolation verses how a surgeon removes a cancer using modern medicine. In ancient times the individual who was ill was left to die away from the ‘healthy’ people. Today the individual is saved by removing the illness and remains part of society. The ‘individual’ in this case is the Muslim religion which can be salvaged, just like Christianity was from their bout of world domination and forced adherence in the Middle Ages.

John Podhoretz expands on this theme today and captures the ‘blunt instrument’ mentality driving these folks who have found the effort to continue forward too difficult:

Their argument seems hard-headed and unsentimental. People are trying to murder Americans, and such people ought to die. Kill as many of the bad guys as you can abroad. Strike Iran from the air if you have to. Do whatever you must to secure the homeland. Don’t let Arabs run the ports. Racially profile Muslims and Arabs out the wazoo. No crocodile tears for the excesses at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

John also identifies the flaw in this view, which is the result these views will achieve. In the competition for ideas the one that promises an end to hostilities, no matter how hard to accomplish, is the better path. Here is what John envisions as the result if we quit now:

The problem is that the policies advocated by the “hell hawks” and by defeatist Democrats offer no real possibility of an end to the war against Islamic radicalism. It will go on forever.

And if it does, it seems certain that at some point in the next few decades, millions of people are going to die in a successful terrorist assault using weapons of mass destruction.

I agree, the easy near term solution is the wrong long term one. We cannot give up on the idea of transforming the Middle East, to foster the competition of peace and prosperity, as long as the majority of people there are willing to fight and die for that future. And they are. People waiting for a perfect situation so that obtaining the goal is easy are waiting on a fantasy. Reality never offers up a slam dunk to a hard problem through sitting back and waiting.