“The depth of the Moslem world’s failure to adjust to modernity, the profundity of its need for scapegoats, the seeming boundlessness of its willingness to accept the death and destruction of its own in exchange for the ‘honor’ of ‘revenge,’ are difficult for Americans to acknowledge.” “Meanwhile, short of a preemptive war, Iran is bound to get the bomb.” “The entire Western world now stands in a position roughly analogous to that of Israel: locked in an essentially permanent struggle with a foe it is impossible either to placate, or to entirely destroy — a foe who demands our own destruction, and whose problems are so deep they would not be solved even by victory.” “The West is on a collision course with Iran.”

Stanley Kurtz ROCKS. If you didn’t read his “Hawkish Gloom” piece on yesterday’s NRO (from which all the above quotes are taken), go read it now. Then, read it again. Read the links too.

Stanley’s notion of the Israelization of the West — the slow change of opinion here from deep dove-hawk, lib-con differences to a glum, grim, pessimistic consensus, is spot on.

I only wonder — as of course I would — if Stanley is gloomy enough. There is a nightmare here, lurking just out of sight behind all the thoughts and articles of the gloomy-cons. The nightmare is so appalling to any civilized person I cannot bring myself to mention it. I’ll just call it the g-word. Us or them. Please may it not come to that. I need a cup of coffee.

And I think I need to stop reading the book I am currently reading, up here in the treehouse, among the leaves and birdsong. I have pretty much figured out what the author’s conclusion will be, anyway.