The Editorial of 2006
Orson Scott Card puts it about as well as it can be put. He describes exactly what I’ve been thinking since 2003 and what I see as the central theme of our republic at this time in our history.
In other words, through nation-building, through the promise of democracy, Bush has created a rallying point with far stronger resonance than anything the Islamic puritans have to offer.
What is their program, after all? We’ll take your sons and get them to blow themselves up in order to murder westerners! Forget the rhetoric — Muslim parents are human beings, and there is nothing more devastating than to lose a child. The only consolation is when it seems to be in a noble cause. But because of President Bush’s promise of democracy, the Muslim puritan cause does not seem noble to more and more Muslims.
Even if they live in countries (or neighborhoods) where they dare not speak up — yet — they do not want any of their children to die just so that the rest of them can live and suffer in slavery to a privileged, selfish class of elitist tyrants.
President Bush’s story offers the common people hope of living decent lives and seeing their children live to adulthood, to grow old surrounded by grandchildren.
The Al-Qaeda, Ayatollah story promises them dead children and the lash.
There are, of course, fanatics who will embrace Islamic terrorism because they choose to blind themselves to the truth and embrace the noble-seeming lies of the tyrants. Al-Qaeda does not lack for recruits.
But it also does not lack for people who fear and hate them. There are few pro-Al-Qaeda demonstrations on the Arab street. The people remember the images of liberated Iraqis tearing down the images of Saddam. And they know — because they have relatives and friends, they hear from merchants and travelers — that in most of Iraq, there is freedom and prosperity like never before.
There’s so much more. Such a good read. Read it all.
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