Haven't We Had Enough of This Crap Yet?

Ignatius's column today, link, ponders the effect on U.S. politics and society of "the next attack," after suicide bombers start to "bleed away" from Iraq. It includes this: "Muslims have mostly been killing other Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that imploding jihad won't continue forever."

Hmm. It seems to me that non-Muslims have also been killing Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Muslims getting killed haven't always been jihadis. Maybe Ignatius should read his own paper. Link. Link.

Ignatius's focus on "Muslim anger"--a phrase he actually uses--with only a passing thought to the sources of that anger . . . maybe he could take a page from the new PM across the pond, Gordon Brown:

In a low-key BBC interview Sunday, and in other public statements on the failed car bombings, Brown has not used the word "Muslim." A Brown spokesman said that was deliberate, just as Brown intends to avoid the phrase "war on terror," which some Muslims see as a euphemism for targeting Islam. The spokesman said Brown was modifying his language to encourage a "strong consensual approach in relation to all the communities."

Brown described al-Qaeda as "a terrorist cause that is totally unacceptable to mainstream people in every faith in every part of the world." And he has been at pains, analysts said, to frame the problem of extremist violence not as a struggle against Islam, but as a struggle against individual criminals.

Gordon Brown, I guess, has had enough of this crap already. It is not "Muslims" who are the threat. Indeed, if we hadn't invaded a country in the heart of the Middle East, many of the "Muslims" Ignatius is concerned about "bleeding away" would pose absolutely no risk to the United States and its allies. But by talking about "Muslims" in this way, we do risk making more "Muslims" angry at us. And I have yet to see any evidence that dropping more bombs on folks of the Islamic religion has resulted in less "Muslim anger." Have you?