With the string of the recent attacks on western targets, we see, that the threat of islamic extremism has risen to new heights.
There are two trends that I believe is new in the current situation.
1. The internet has made the spreading and proliferation of Islamism so much easier. We see it with all these perpetrators that just jump out of the box all of a sudden. Proselytizing and hiring is much easier. This makes it very difficult to contain the threat and it poses a serious threat to the openness of the internet as such. What are we to do? Let all these maniacal psychopaths keep up hiring new merchants of death, or start controlling the net? As a principled man of free speech, I, off cause, would never propose a censuring of the net, and the question is if it is really possible. But the dilemma is there for us to ponder. I believe that Anonymous are targeting this threat rightly, by going after the propaganda on the net. Perhaps it did not do everything, but the idea is sound. But we have to be careful here. We may sacrifice some of our own dearest principles because of the islamists. and we would then have lost in another way.
2. The second threat goes hand in hand with the first trend, and it is the worst of the developments I have seen so far. After 9/11 Bush attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, in practise bringing the fight to the Islamists. But since the world has changed with the internet, this is not possible anymore. The fight is everywhere, in Afghanistan, Iraq, England, the US, France. In effect we are starting to see that the proliferation of the conflict everywhere in the world. It has become a world war. This is really what we are trying to get to terms with. Now we are also fighting these bastards in or own backyard, and that makes it so much more the menace. In a way the ideas of Bush was sound, it kept the fight away from the West for a long time, but it was only a prelude to the real fight that is coming now. Now we are fighting in Europe, Russia, the US. This is basically the second phase of the war with sunni extremism, and that is going to propel the world onto a path, that we have to be very sharp to keep on in a straight manner, because it is going to hurt.
G-d bless the peace we will retain in the end.
