No Rest in Battle Against Radical Islam

I quoted Henry Kissinger at length yesterday, in my post, "From Impeachment to War Crimes: The New Revenge Against BushCo."

Well it turns out that Henry Kissinger, the former professor of international relations and Secretary of State, has a penetrating essay up today at the Washington Post.

The whole piece is worth a good read, but the section on the challenge of Islamist fundamentalism is particularly good:

Today it is radical Islam that threatens the already brittle state structure via a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran as the basis of a universal political organization. Jihadist Islam rejects national sovereignty based on secular state models; it seeks to extend its reach to wherever significant populations profess the Muslim faith. Since neither the international system nor the internal structure of existing states has legitimacy in Islamist eyes, its ideology leaves little room for Western notions of negotiation or equilibrium in a region of vital interest to the security and well-being of the industrial states. That struggle is endemic; we do not have the option of withdrawal. We can retreat from any one place, such as Iraq, but only to be obliged to resist from new positions, probably more disadvantageously. Even advocates of unilateral withdrawal from Iraq speak of retaining residual forces to prevent a resurgence of al-Qaeda or radicalism.

See also my earlier entry, "Fitna": Islamist Univeralism and Western Civilization."

And for deeper reference, see Jason Pappas, "Islam and Our Denial."