StrategyUnit:Foreign Policy & Security Issues Blog

“I must study politics and war that my sons many have liberty to study mathenatematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, navel architecture,navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” - John Adams from Letter to Abigail Adams

Globalized Islam, Globalized Insurgency

Back at San Francisco State University, I wrote and published a paper titled “In the Midst of the Swarm: Reconceptualizing the (Mislabeled) Global War on Terrorism” (April 2005), where I stated:

“For all of Moore’s cheering of a grand social movement of social justice from those from the liberal end of the spectrum, it is the Islamist global guerillas that have gained the spotlight in the creation of a global social movement.”

Moore is the guy who wrote “The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head”, championing anti-globalization crowd as being the Second Superpower.

Stopping by VodkaPundit today, I came across this mention of Mark Steyn’s article at the Telegraph:

Indeed, when you look at it that way, the biggest globalisation success story of recent years is not McDonald’s or Disney, but Islamism: the Saudis took what was 80 years ago a severe but obscure and unimportant strain of Islam practised by Bedouins in the middle of a desert miles from anywhere and successfully exported it to the heart of Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Leeds, Buffalo. It was a strictly local virus, but the bird flew the coop. And now, instead of the quaintly parochial terrorist movements of yore, we have the first globalised insurgency.

What’s the bigger threat? A globalisation that exports cheeseburgers and pop songs or a globalisation that exports the fiercest and unhealthiest aspects of its culture? Far too many American conservatives still think the dragons are at the far fringes of the map - that, in the 21st century, America can be a 19th-century republic untroubled by the world’s pathogens because of its sheer distance from them.

Good to see this idea picking up more speed.

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One comment, leave your comment or trackback.
  1. August 1st 2006

    Hezbollah will win the real victory, the political victory.

    A “political victory” for Israel won’t stop the rockets — that requires killing the people building/supplying/firing them.

    Purple Avenger


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