I’ve been laying low in the tall grass trying to finish a book about the Islamist threat and the fact that it involves a lot more than terrorism, but the controversy over George Will’s recent columns hits too close to home to pass up.

As a long-time dissenter from the democracy project, those who follow such things won’t be surprised to learn that, contrary to many of my friends on the Right, I have sympathy for Will’s position (or, to be more accurate in deference to Pete Wehner’s withering critique, Will’s latest position). I don’t completely agree with it; Will eschews consideration of Islamism, which I think is the fatal flaw in our nation-building ambitions. But people seem to have forgotten that we started this war quite content to leave the Taliban in place in Afghanistan — if Mullah Omar had agreed to our demand to turn bin Laden & Co. over to us, there would never have been an invasion of Afghanistan. Now, with bin Laden & Co. gone from Afghanistan (as Rich noted in this post a few days back), the argument is that we not only continue to need 60,000+ American troops there but a “surge” of another 40,000 — mostly, according to our commanders, to fight the “culture of poverty.” And why? To prevent the re-emergence of the Taliban and its brutalization of the Afghan people . . . i.e., something we would never have invaded Afghanistan over in the first place. So the idea is to continue idling on Iran — the real problem — while doubling down on the Taliban. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Anyway, my contribution to the debate is here. It’s a long essay, and my primary aim is to demonstrate the folly of the democracy project’s premises. This is necessary, I contend, because:

There has been a fascinating point of alignment since 9/11 between the anti-war Left and the democracy hawks. Both sides have failed to identify the enemy: Islamists. The hard Left resists because it doesn’t see Islamism as an enemy at all. The Islamists, like the Left, regard the United States as the problem in the world.
Democracy hawks are another matter. Their boundless faith in democracy blinds them to the severity of the Islamist challenge. For them, dwelling on Islam is counterproductive: If Islam is understood as a huge liability, Americans will rebel against the prohibitive costs, in lives and money, of democracy-building. So the democracy-hawk approach is either not to mention Islam at all or to absurdly portray it as a “moderating” influence that will help build stable democracies. They shame doubters into silence by decrying “Islamophobia” and “cultural condescension” — mortal sins these days. On some level, the democracy hawks may grasp that the threat here involves more than terrorism. But they’ve convinced themselves that if we could just get rid of the terrorists, the rest of the Muslims who abhor us would be brought around by democracy’s light.
It’s a fantasy, and we’re betting our lives on it.