Bernard Lewis on Islamism...

I agree with him..but I worry when he says his optimism stems from our enemies mistakes...

It's misleading to say we are engaged in a war against terrorism," Mr. Lewis said. "If Churchill had told us that we were engaged in a war against submarines and war craft, we'd be in a different world today. Terrorism is a tactic, it is not the enemy."

The enemy, he said, is Islamism, which he placed as the third in a sequence of ideological deformations that have taken place in his lifetime, the first two being Nazism and Bolshevism.

"There is only one way to deal with Islamism: to mobilize the Muslims themselves on our side," Mr. Lewis said. "Nazism and Bolshevism were a curse to their own people before they became a threat to the world. We must strive for the same situation. … Perhaps it is our only solution. We must free them or they will destroy us."

Mr. Lewis said his optimism in facing Islamism derives from his expectation of foolishness and error on the part of our adversaries, noting historical examples such as Hitler's exile of his best scientists.