[Urbane Guerrilla]

Ben Franklin, Beestie: he of "A Republic -- if you can keep it."

Of course, we and a great deal of the rest of humanity -- and our cause is humanity's, as our foes are explicitly antidemocratic -- are much better off once we win this war. The particularly tricky part, I think, is how we'll know we have indeed won -- amorphous terrorist groups hardly have territory to defend, though their national sponsors do, nor capital cities. If anything but bigotry motivates our foes at bottom, I've yet to hear of it and to be convinced. I'm even less convinced that we should "take a hit" from such a lot of swinish fascists. Should they not suffer for their disenlightenment? Do we have to decapitate all the authoritarians or can we get the job done at a half or a third? I think it is the unfree, the slavemongers, who must tremble at our righteous wrath.

There are those who expect all our nation's troubles to originate from those parts of the world not meaningfully connected to the greater global economy: most of the continent of Africa and a considerable swatch of Araby; the Axis of Evil, and on a back burner places like the Transcaucasus. Note this sample includes a lot of Islamic countries.