Ralph Peters ought to get CAIR's dander up. He writes, and I agree, that "the Arab world, rich and poor, is nearly hopeless. With a few, strategically unimportant exceptions, it has given itself over to the narcotic effects of hatred and blame. Arab civilization cannot compete on a single productive front in the 21st century. And there is nothing we can do about it. If the Arab world will not repair itself, no amount of indulgence will make a difference. We have wasted decades on governments and populations who need us as an enemy to justify their profound failures.


"When well-meaning officials, academics or pop singers assure us that Islam is not the problem, they are utterly wrong. Islam, as promoted by Saudi Arabia and practiced by fanatics elsewhere in the Arab world, is precisely the problem. The Saudi variant attempts to buy off the forces of history at home, while exporting the Middle Ages to countries as diverse as Indonesia, Afghanistan and Turkey. The purpose of Saudi proselytizing seems to be to re-create in every Muslim culture the limited prospects of the Arab world."

These are the same conclusions I came to after reading Bernard Lewis's books The Middle East and What Went Wrong?. Islam itself achieved great stability and culture while Europe was suffering the oppression of an apostate Christian church, because it was ruled by Turks, not Arabs.

Peters sees hope in the non-arab Muslim countries, provided we handle things properly, but he says we're wasting our time with Arab states. I think that we have to confront them because they threaten Israel, and because of the oil they control, but the resolution will be military, not diplomatic.