Thursday, December 08, 2005

Islamic Empire

Cohen's relatively reasonable today, but aside from that I want to highlight this bit:

But I do not fear the emergence of a vast, radical Islamic empire stretching from Granada to Jakarta, and neither do I believe that toppling Hussein dealt a blow to terrorists or made the United States one iota safer.


When I lived in London I rented a room from a guy who had been in the RAF for a long time and worked in a civilian capacity for the British MOD after that. One story he told me - and this was before 9/11 of course - was how immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union a bunch of hardheaded military/foreign policy types were obsessed with the idea that the fall of the Soviet Union would enable its Muslim parts to unite with the rest of the Muslim world to form a united pan-Muslim empire.

This guy thought all this was incredibly silly, and it was the first I'd ever heard of it, but the concept has driven a lot of the thinking of the lunatics who run our foreign policy. What's amazing to me is how quickly they came up with it once the old enemy died.