I’m swamped with other stuff right now (and I’ve already sounded-off on Beinart) but here are two emails re Drum’s take:

He writes, “[Islam is] not fundamentally expansionist, and its power to kill people isn’t even remotely in the same league.”
1. Islam is expanding in Europe with no currently visible bounds. Islam is explicitly expansionist – it’s called the Caliphate.
2. Islam is unlike fascism or communism – in that – it is not an external threat. It is a parasitic, internal threat – and that’s specifically why it’s so dangerous. It corrupts Western societies from within, using our own “tolerance” and lack of will to defeat us.
3. Iran and Pakistan both have nukes. It’s not “in the same league” as Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan – because it’s MUCH WORSE. But it’s not at all qualitatively different than the Soviet Union. Quantitatively different, yes, qualitatively, not at all.
After all, radical Islam succeeded in doing something no country (to my knowledge) has ever been able to do: Live in our country, to plot mass murder against us, using only readily available weapons, we willingly supplied.

And…

Drum seems to have his metaphors mixed up. He says that in the 5 years leading up to Pearl Harbor, we had this, and that, and that done by the Germans and Japanese, but that since 9/11 nothing of such import has been seen out of Islam. What he forgets is that 9/11 was Pearl Harbor. Germany and Japan had no major victories after Pearl Harbor. Maybe the lack of another 9/11 has to do with Bush’s prosecution of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and stepped up security at home–Gitmo, the prosecution of Jihadist groups, etc. He accidentally makes a good argument for Bush.