RADICAL ISLAM

I didn't know what to think when I started to read it, but Senator Rand Paul's (R, KY) speech analyzing US policy with regard to responding to radical Islam is really quite informative.  War should never be the only policy option exercised.

One thing he notes that I don't think many Americans understand is the impact of historical memory in the Muslim world.  Americans view of historical memory is fleeting so often they do not understand the impact of policy decisions.

Americans need to understand that Islam has a long and perseverant memory. As Bernard Lewis writes, “despite an immense investment in the teaching and writing of history, the general level of historical knowledge in American society is abysmally low. The Muslim peoples, like everyone else in the world, are shaped by their history, but unlike some others, they are keenly aware of it.”

There is a lot of merit in finding a middle path.
 
What the United States needs now is a policy that finds a middle path. A policy that is not rash or reckless. A foreign policy that is reluctant, restrained by Constitutional checks and balances but does not appease. A foreign policy that recognizes the danger of radical Islam but also the inherent weaknesses of radical Islam. A foreign policy that recognizes the danger of bombing countries on what they might someday do. A foreign policy that requires, as Kennan put it, “a long term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of . . .  expansive tendencies." A policy that understands the “distinction between vital and peripheral interests.”

And where are the great thinkers today who can conceptualize American policy options like George F. Kennan?

I think all of us have the duty to ask where are the Kennans of our generation? When foreign policy has become so monolithic, so lacking in debate that Republicans and Democrats routinely pass foreign policy statements without debate and without votes, where are the calls for moderation, the calls for restraint?