Chris At Home

...and by far the scariest thing I will post. It is actually a rewrite of one of my first posts, back when I was getting 10 hits a day, so I doubt that you have read it. It is reposted in light of a message I received from a blogger friend and is meant to explain why I find Islamism so threatening.

Winds of Change gathered these posts in one place for our reference.

First, Steven Den Beste (with Tigerhawk's updates), explains why the West is under attack and how best to defeat Islamism.

Causes:

Collective failure of the nations and people in a large area which is predominately Arab and/or Islamic.

1. Economically the only contribution they make is by selling natural resources which are available to them solely through luck.
2. They make no significant contribution to international science or engineering.
3. They make little or no cultural contribution to the world. Few seek out their poetry, their writing, their movies or music. The most famous Muslim writer of fiction in the world is under a fatwa death sentence now and lives in exile in Europe.
4. Their only diplomatic relevance is due to their oil.
5. They are not respected by the world, or by themselves.
6. None of this has anything to do with historical Arab culture at its height, which was rich, powerful, and very impressive. It produced great literature and poetry, great science, and amazing architecture. It adopted and regularized place-value numbering, developed arithmetic and invented algebra. But that all largely ended several hundred years ago. All of the discussion above refers to the current culture of the region, and the people living there now.

Since this is a "face" culture, shame about this this has led to rising but unfocused discontent, anger and resentment.

Our strategy:

The large solution is to reform the Arab/Muslim world. This is the path we have chosen.

1. The true root cause of the war is their failure and their resentment and frustration and shame caused by that failure.
2. They fail because they are crippled by political, cultural and religious chains which their extremists refuse to give up. The real causes of their failure is well described by Ralph Peters. Most of the Arab nations suffer from all seven of his critical handicaps, and the goal of reform is to correct all seven, as far as possible.
3. If their governments can be reformed, and their people freed of the chains which bind them and cripple them, they will begin to achieve, and to become proud of their accomplishments. This will reduce and eventually eliminate their resentment.
4. Their governments would then cease needing scapegoats...

The American Digest posts on The First Terrorist War:

The consequences of a political and military stand-down would be to allow our enemies the time, basing and mobility to grow in numbers, advance in training, achieve greater tactical position within and about our borders, and acquire ever more sophisticated and powerful weapons. Once they have advanced to the next level of lethality they will strike us again with an effect on our lives, liberties, property and economy more extreme than 9/11. The goals of the Radical Islamic forces arrayed against us are the same as their factotums, the Palestinians, have for Israel. In the jihad against Israel we can see what the Islamic forces have in mind for us: the complete destruction of our systems, the occupation of our land, the usurpation of our government, and the death or conversion of all our citizens. These are the goals of Radical Islam as understood by their fundamentalists and as tolerated by the vast majority of believers. ... Beyond victory in the First Terrorist War is a greater goal. What we must seek is not merely the "control" and "containment" of terror, for terror in this guise cannot be controlled or contained. We must come to the deeper understanding that only a complete victory over the global Radical Islamic forces can prevent the onset of a confrontation more terrible than the current war.

What we must press for in the Terrorist War is a victory so decisive that we can, in the end, avoid the larger war lurking on the not-so-distant horizon - - a true war between civilizations. That war, should it come, will not take the name of The Terrorist War, but of The Islamic War. The Terrorist War is still a struggle that can be fought and won with conventional means. An Islamic War, should it come, would engulf the world and be anything but conventional.

And finally, Wretchard's horrifying 3 Conjectures post.
Conjecture 1: Terrorism has lowered the nuclear threshold

These obstacles to terrorist capability are the sole reason that the War on Terror has not yet crossed the nuclear theshold, the point at which enemies fight each other with weapons of mass destruction. The terrorist intent to destroy the United States, at whatever cost to themselves, has been a given since September 11. Only their capability is in doubt...
In stark contrast, the nuclear threshold against a terrorism may be crossed once they get the capability to attack with weapons of mass destruction. Unlike the old early warning systems, designed to gauge Soviet intent, the intelligence systems of the War on Terror are meant to measure capability. The relevant Cold War question was 'do they intend to use the Bomb?'. In the War on Terror, the relevant question is simply 'do they have the Bomb?' This puts the nuclear threshold very low.

Conjecture 2: Attaining WMDs will destroy Islam (read the analysis)

The so-called strengths of Islamic terrorism: fanatical intent; lack of a centralized leadership; absence of a final authority and cellular structure guarantee uncontrollable escalation once the nuclear threshold is crossed. Therefore the 'rational' American response to the initiation of terrorist WMD attack would be all out retaliation from the outset... The greatest threat to Muslims is radical Islam; and the greatest threat of all is a radical Islam armed with weapons of mass destruction.

Conjecture 3: The War on Terror is the 'Golden Hour' -- the final chance

It is supremely ironic that the survival of the Islamic world should hinge on an American victory in the War on Terror, the last chance to prevent that terrible day in which all the decisions will have already been made for us. That effort really consists of two separate aspects: a campaign to destroy the locus of militant Islam and prevent their acquisition of WMDs; and an attempt to awaken the world to the urgency of the threat.

Wretchard's follup post is here.
There you have it.
Read all 3 articles. Expecially with regard to the 3 Conjectures, my excerpts do not provide enough context to understand the validity of the argument. Go, read.