Struggle

The National Intelligence Estimate, representing the consensus view of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, recognizes the obvious: that the invasion of Iraq has spawned a new generation of Islamic extremists who are determined to strike at the West, that Iraq has served as both a recruitment poster and a training ground for jihadists.

“The Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse” , summarized one U.S. intelligence official in referring to the NIE, which was completed in April 2006. [NYT, Sept. 24, 2006]

Bush calls the Iraq War the “central front” in the “war on terror,” which, in turn, he says is “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21^st Century.”

I am certain that the war against Bush is going to be the defining ideological struggle of the first decades of the 21st century.

But who will fire the first shot?