Bernard Lewis in the Atlantic

A terrific quote from Bernard Lewis, the noted Middle-East history specialist...

The better part of my life was dominated by two great struggles—the first against Nazism, the second against Bolshevism. In both of these, after long and bitter conflict, we were victorious. Both were a curse to their own peoples, as well as a threat to the world, and for those peoples, defeat was a liberation.

Today we confront a third totalitarian perversion, this time of Islam—a challenge in some ways similar, in some ways different. On our side, I see the same initial unwillingess to confront realities—to realize who we are, who they are, and what is at stake. But there is also a difference in the very nature of what we face. The Axis had no weapons of mass destruction. The Soviets had them, but were deterred from using them by what came to be known as “mutual assured destruction.” Our present adversaries either have or will soon have weapons of mass destruction, but for them, with their apocalyptic mind-set, mutual assured destruction would not be a deterrent; it would be an inducement.