The above-linked Op-ed is great. There is a battle for hearts and minds going on in the Arab world, and while the US is not terribly popular there at this point, it is more important that the pluralistic views we wish to nurture of personal liberty and cultural and economic modernization are gaining increasing popularity among a silent majority in the Arab younger generation (and, in spite of the headlines, public opinion polls in the Arab world show this). We need to facilitate more outreach and exchange of ideas in these communities, even at the risk of undermining the power of our autocratic "allies" in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. As we have said here before, to preserve US security, we also need to allow more foreign students, not fewer, to attend US universities and absorb the better parts of our free and pluralistic culture.
Despite some awful day-to-day costs in American lives, we are now winning the war against extremism in Iraq -- even the New York Times front and Op-Ed pages admits to this (with regard to the latter, see Friedman's very interesting piece, "Taking Ownership of Iraq?"). Just as in Iraq, where we used the surge and some realistic outreach to former adversaries to provide an environment for Iraq to heal, so must we provide the cultural environment for the forces of moderation in the Arab world to overcome the radicals in the arena of ideas and public opinion.
President Bush will never be remembered as a George Washington (or Albert Einstein), but by making the war against Islamic extremism the defining issue in our relations with the Arab world (rather than oil), he set the crisis-ridden groundwork necessary for political and religious self-examination by a generation of conflicted Arabs, forcing them to choose their path (remember, Islamic extremism grew during the Clinton years, as no one rose up to battle it internally, or externally). It is rare to defend the Bush administration for anything, but his goals of promoting democratic self-examination in the Arab world was well-documented as a key strategy from the start in the global war on terror, and if we now do the right things to facilitate this cultural revolution from within the Arab world, we can still help turn "chicken shit into chicken salad".
Excerpt of "You Tube" Op-Ed, linked above:
"When it comes to user-generated content and interactivity, Al Qaeda is now behind the curve. And the United States can help to keep it there by encouraging the growth of freer, more empowered online communities, especially in the Arab-Islamic world.
A recent report I wrote for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty details this flow. In July 2007, for example, Al Qaeda released more than 450 statements, books, articles, magazines, audio recordings, short videos of attacks and longer films. These products reach the world through a network of quasi-official online production and distribution entities, like Al Sahab, which releases statements by Osama bin Laden.
But the Qaeda media nexus, as advanced as it is, is old hat. If Web 1.0 was about creating the snazziest official Web resources and Web 2.0 is about letting users run wild with self-created content and interactivity, Al Qaeda and its affiliates are stuck in 1.0."
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