The looming fall of Iraq, with Afghanistan posed to follow, is forcing a re-think of the misnamed War on Terror, what is more properly thought of as our defense against the War of Jihad.  Unless there is another catastrophe like or worse than 9/11/01 (which is far from unthinkable given the fragility of Pakistan’s nuclear-armed government), nobody thinks the American people have the will to fight aground war anywhere in the Islamic world, the base of the War of Jihad. Kevin Williamson at National Review offers a sober assessment of the failed Counter-insurgency strategy and nation-building, a strategy that did work most notably in Japan, but at the cost of a military occupation and subsequent presence that continues even today, almost 70 years later.  Utterly devastated in a way we were unwilling to stomach imposing on Iraq or Afghanistan, the Japanese had the will to change, something lacking in Muslim countries today. So what other choices to we...(Read Full Post)