"The fact is, the moment you go to war with Islam, you BECOME the enemy. The moment you begin a holy war you become qualitatively indistinguishable from the evil tyrant you wish to destroy."-- from a reader

Why do you write this? And why do you slip in, just before the second appearance of the word "war," the adjective "holy"?

And why, suddenly, has a war -- a war of self-defense by the Infidels of this world -- suddenly become transmuted into that "holy war" and that is apparently a war which has now been defined not as what it should be -- a war to contain an ideology, or the instruments by which that ideology is spread (combat or qitaal, economic warfare, propaganda, Da'wa, demographic conquest)-- but rather as a "holy war" against some "evil tyrant" (who is that "evil tyrant" pray tell?) whom we, the Infidels, wish not to constrain, apparently, but all of a sudden "to destroy"?

The dyer's-hand argument, by which we are told that "we will inevitably become the thing we fight" is unproven and unprovable. Did the Americans and British become just like the Nazis in our total war (if not "holy war" -- though Eisenhower titled his memoir "Crusade in Europe")? Have the Israelis been setting off bombs in busses and restaurants in Ramallah and Gaza and for that matter, in Beirut and Damascus? Is there the slightest indication that the Americans in Iraq are behaving like the Shi'a militia, drilling holes in the skulls and arms and legs and other members of the Sunnis they kidnap, and ditto with what the Sunnis do to the Shi'a they do not blow up with car bombs but capture? Of course not.

We are in no danger of becoming, as the platitude puts it, "the very thing we are fighting." This is as absurd as those in the ACLU who want us to believe that the most modest measures of self-protection against would-be terrorists are the first step on a slippery slope that, overnight, is just about to lead to the Gestapo knocking on all our doors.

This "Where-Will-It-All-End" Argument, by the new, unimproved, thoroughly debased ACLU, is an argument both hysterical and banal, with which we are all familiar.

And we give little sign of fighting a "holy war" and indeed, no major warfare at all is required, in order to constrain Islam and weaken the camp of Islam, if only we had our wits about us, or at least chose to listen to those who have kept their own wits about them.

We can constrain Islam. And the most important part of being able to constrain Islam, without feeling badly or apologetic about it, is to do two things.

The first is to learn as much as possible about the tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam, and about the 1350-year history of Jihad-conquest, and subsequent subjugation of conquered non-Muslims.

The second is to learn what has led to the developments of the legal and political institutions in the Western, Infidel world, that could not have been created, and would survive for one minute, in a society suffused with Islam. And along with that legal and political history, the history of the unrivalled intellectual, artistic, and scientific achievements of the West have to be learned about, so that those inclined to disregard or take for granted the legacy that they have a duty to protect, will know what that legacy they have a duty to protect from Islam, consists of, and how it came to be.

Two tasks. Neither one easy. Both necessary.