The War Against Jihadism

I just finished George Weigel's latest book, Faith, Reason and the War Against Jihadism. It's a short book, around 150 pages, but it is packed with flashes of brilliance. It was my hope that Weigel's observations would keep me busy for the duration of my Milwaukee to Saint Louis train ride. He didn't disappoint me. I've always admired Weigel's ability to combine erudition and realism, principle and pragmatism. The book, which Weigel describes as a "Call to Action," is comprised of 15 "lessons" that can be drawn from September 11, the war in Iraq and a host of other hot-button global issues. It's worth picking up.

Efforts to accelerate change in the Arab Islamic world by the administration of George W. Bush were shaped by a realistic assessment of the situation after 9/11. As Fouad Ajami notes, the "custodians of American power were under great pressure to force history's pace." To attempt to accelerate the transition to responsible and responsive government in the Middle East was neither an exercise in cowboy apocalypticism nor Wilsonian romanticism. It was a realistic objective, given an unacceptable status quo that was inherently unstable; that was unstable because it was corrupt; and that was producing terrorist and jihadists determined to challenge those corruptions.