Prospects of Terror: An Inquiry into Jihadi Alternatives

[NYer]

Hat tip to Powerline Blog for pointing to this one ...

The first campaigns of the Long War are drawing to a close. The Jihadis have lost the opening rounds. What next? (http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5345)

What happened on 9/11 was not an earthquake, over and done quickly, but a long, slow and complete reshuffling of the tectonic plates that comprise human civilization; something comparable to the deaths of empires and the passing of eras. Such events are not over in a day, or a year, or a decade. They take their time. And when it ends at last the world will be a different place, in ways that we now have no way of knowing. But the part we have played in it will, in some shape or form, match our position when it’s all over, American or European or Arab, Muslim or Christian or Secular.

We are still amid early days, roughly the days of Midway and Guadalcanal and El Alamein in a previous great struggle. “Not the beginning of the end,” as Churchill put it, “but the end of the beginning.”

Part one of JR Dunn's analysis ... Part two: "Sidelining Europe" promises to be equally thought-provoking.

Update: Part 2 can be found Here. (http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5348)

[NYer]

Part Three (http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5351&search=jihadi) is available.

The first point to understand concerning future Jihadi plans for the U.S. is that the Bush Doctrine is dead, insofar as it involves preemption of terrorist threats. It will remain in formal effect for the balance of Bush’s second term, and may be activated in a campaign against the Iranian nuclear program. But when George W. Bush leaves office, it will be a dead letter. Politics no longer ends at the water’s edge, and relentless attacks by the political opposition, along with unbridled media criticism, have rendered the concept radioactive. No candidate of either party will dare lay claim to it after the current administration leaves office.

The second point is that most of the defensive programs put into place following 9/11 are also under threat. Many of them, including the Patriot Act, telecommunications surveillance, and the domestic nuclear-detection program, will be abandoned by a new administration, and the rest will be emasculated.

That is all the opening that the Jihadis will need.

Read the whole thing ...