by Matt Barr

Watcher's Council results, August 18

White smoke rose from the Watcher's Council conclave Friday:

ShrinkWrapped's A Questionable Assumption was voted best Council post of the week.

There is an assumption about the war on Expansionist Totalitarian Islam that is shared by both the left and the right and is worth questioning.... The common assumption, overtly made by the left and tacitly accepted by the right, is that the Islamists are inherently weaker than the West and therefore, do not pose an existential threat to the West. In other words, neither side of the political divide believes the West can lose this war. This belief animates much of what passes for strategic thinking.

Read the whole thing. I hope we never get to a point where our political will in the West bobs up to the level of our military might, because a few cities are apt to get vaporized if that happens (and it will take a horrendous disaster, or several in succession, to prompt the change). But the premise that everybody, left and right, assumes the West will prevail is correct, I think, and that causes both the left to question a military component of the war at all and the right to favor half measures.

Muslim Musings on British Muslims at a blog called Eteraz was voted best non-Council post of the week.

Many Brits, for some foolish reason, pin the blame on British foreign policy. Oh, if only our foreign policy did not mimic the American foreign policy, we would stop producing home grown terrorists, because they would have no reason to hate us. Wrong. Dead wrong.

And wishful thinking by those who say so, I would add.

This week's nominees were posted here, and the full results of the vote are posted here.

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