Mark Steyn, hands down my favorite writer, laments the fact that we fail to recognize the role that ideology plays in what I like to call "the new world war." A failure to actually name the enemy, coupled with a lack of a clearly defined course on how to sustain the war and ultimately defeat our enemies. As usual, Mr. Steyn couples excellent writing with a history lesson– this time, the "Long Telegram."
[M]any of the administration’s present problems derive from squeamishness about ideological confrontation that any effective Long Telegram would have to address. When President Bush declared a "war on terror," cynics understood that he had no particular interest in the IRA or the Tamil Tigers, but that he was constrained from identifying the real enemy in any meaningful sense: In the fall of 2001, a war on Islamic this or Islamic that would have caused too many problems with Gen. Musharraf and the House of Saud and other chaps he wanted to keep on side. But it’s one reason, for example, why the Democrats, as soon as it suited them, had no difficulty detaching the Iraq front from the broader war.