Reason: A Fatal Case of Empathy

Brendan O'Neill, an editor from spiked-online in the UK, presents a fresh reasoning of the problems with western approaches to the war in Iraq, especially the pathological domestic infighting between the left and right. O'Neill concludes that our inability to agree on a characterization of the infamous and amorphous insurgency stems from a common failure to recognize the fundamental link between the coalition allies.

This insurgency is best understood, not as a band of freedom fighters or evil incarnate, but as a movement with an intuitive grasp of the West's fearful psychology.

The analysis in this piece rings true for me in the same way that William Raspberry recognizes a "keen insight to a difficult problem": I knew it all the time, I just never articulated it.

Please check out this piece regardless of your take on the war or the war debate. It has much more to say on those subject than I wish to attempt.

However, I will say briefly that the observation that the enemies in the "Global War On Terror" have chosen their tactics so carefully, appealing directly to western popular consciousness, should give us pause to consider if our tactics, sending our military in limited force to refashion uncooperative or hostile states, is the really the best option at our disposal.