The Kurds don’t want Islamic supremacy, and there are lots of them. There are also other secular factions. Even if that were not true, the United States should not want it because it endangers Americans. This is a war about protecting Americans first and worrying about everything else second.

I think the people on our side are now engaged in something we rightly found fault with the Left about prior to the war: namely, decoupling Iraq from the greater war on terror. Iraq is only one chapter of what is a greater battle. Stabilizing Iraq is an important goal, but it is not as important as eliminating threats to U.S. national security. Promoting anything that significantly promotes militant Islam necessarily creates more miltitants and harms American national security. As it took only 19 militants to take us to this place, I should think the creation of any new militants should not be a small issue.

And for all of us who have said, time and again, that Islamic reform – which can only be done by Muslims themselves – is a crucial part of winning the overall war, how would establishing Islam as the Iraqi state religion achieve that? What is the incentive for reform if the United States thinks Islam, as is, is worthy of being established as the state religion in a place we have committed great effort to securing.

It would be very convenient for me to second-guess what I would have done differently at this point. I hope I would have handled Iraq as the Pentagon hoped to handle Iraq, because I think that was a good plan (i.e., installing an Iraqi government in waiting at an early stage). I hope I wouldn’t have waited all those months after Afghanistan to get on with it. I don’t know if I could have held to that.

But I do know this. I would have called it the war on militant Islam, beginning at about 1030am on September 11, 2001, and I would have fought it that way. I would by now have used my bully pulpit for four years to talk about this ideology that is at the root of this war. I would have tried to promote reform and empower moderates by talking openly about what the militants believe, and thus trying to marginalize and discredit them. That way, if three years later I had to confront an effort to make Islam the state religion of someplace we had had to invade, I would already have built a record either to support a known brand of moderate Islam, or to oppose the idea resolutely because I had made a point of establishing the correlation between Islam and terrorism. I don’t think that is Monday morning quarterbacking – I have been saying that for a long time.

Finally, I would not be viewing a political settlement in Iraq as the end of the war – since it is the war on militant Islam, not the war against Saddam and the insurgency. I would by now, I hope, have taken the battle to Iran – and, in fact, I might have considered doing that BEFORE Iraq since we knew that Iran was harboring al Qaeda leadership before the Iraq operation started – in addition to Iran’s rich record of anti-American terrorism.