It's amazing how 2 people can take the same observations, make the same projections, and come to utterly opposite conclusions about the outcome's desirability.

Such cases are spectacularly important -  for the onlookers, it's an unparalleled opportunity to strip away rhetorical tools, internal politics, issues that vary with perspective, and figure out which side of an axiomatic debate you land on.  If you're lucky, the clarity is just astounding.  Almost literally, one guy will get up and says "x+y = z;  and z is Good" and the next guy comes in and says "x+y = z;  and z is the Bad."   We then use our internal compasses to decide how we feel about Z.

The Islamo-fascists have recently published a pair of treatises that give us such an opportunity.  It's simply fascinating reading and almost feels directed towards the US apologists who believe the causus belli is some dark, back room twist in America's foreign policy or the vast right wing / NeoCon conspiracy.   Our Islamo-Fascist writers boil it all down - it's the very essence of our political system and lifestyle they oppose.

First, Amir Taheri, a mid East analyst we should all be reading a lot more of, writes in the NY Post with his translation of a recently published Al Qaeda book laying out the organization's case for war - in essence "What They're Fighting For":

 'IT is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy." This is the message of a new book, just published by al Qaeda in several Arab countries.

...The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to "make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad." If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims "reluctant to die in martyrdom" in defense of their faith.

He says that it is vital to prevent any normalization and stabilization in Iraq. Muslim militants should make sure that the United States does not succeed in holding elections in Iraq and creating a democratic government. "If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target [for democratization] would be the whole of the Muslim world," Al-Ayyeri writes.

..."Do we want what happened in Turkey to happen to all Muslim countries?" he asks. "Do we want Muslims to refuse taking part in jihad and submit to secularism, which is a Zionist-Crusader concoction?"

..."In Iraq today, there are only two sides," Al-Ayyeri asserts. "Here we have a clash of two visions of the world and the future of mankind. The side prepared to accept more sacrifices will win."

I could easily quote the entire article.  Right up to the end, this document and the project it lays out could have been written by Rice / Cheney / Rumsfeld.   The axiomatic debate is "X + Y= better lives in this world; that is GOOD" vs. "X + Y = better lives in this world; that is BAD."  There's something almost magical about seeing our goals reflected back at us so clearly and forcefully by the 'enemy';  the heights of their intellectual hierarchy seem to understand we-the-hawks (albeit in their own, twisted, way) better than some of our own citizens.

This message is also clearly echoed in this amazing piece of Islamo-fascist literature outlining The Correct Political Activism for Muslims in the West.   The author Sajjad Khan is - his message aside - a good writer & quite lucid.   Khan lays out the case for why Western political systems necessarily fail his breed of Muslims:

...The Western viewpoint in life divorces societal actions in this life from the hereafter and therefore ignores any accountability after death. Therefore Western politicians judge actions they do in this life according to their own criteria usually the pursuit of material benefit, i.e. utilitarianism.

...What is also not fully understood by Muslims and Non-Muslims alike is that Politics can not be stripped from the Islamic belief, it is inherent within the Islamic ideology that it came to solve all problems and came to address the people’s affairs.

...Consequently the Islamic ideology by its nature cannot co-exists alongside other ideologies such as communism or capitalism within the same society

Well, there you have it in their own words.    There will be no conflict if we all agree to sacrifice our lives in this world in preparation for the next, integrate Islamic belief into our political system and abandon capitalism.   This whole thread strongly echoes an article I blogged about a while ago from an objectivist philosopher.

Still..... something tells me that the "Bush = Hitler" crowd won't be swayed about the real reason we're at war.  They'd rather see Bush fail than Sajjad Khan and Al-Ayyeri.

---