Welcome to The Hoosier Illuminati. Macintosh bigot, clothes horse, motorsports fanatic (as long as they turn right), Anglophile.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. --Henry Ward Beecher

VDH on radical Islam and lessons not learned

That guy who writes like me, Victor Davis Hanson, has some thoughts on all the lessons we have yet to learn about radical Islam and how we deal it.  Most important is this paragraph on energy independence, which is the greatest weapon we have in the war on terror:

Second, windfall petrol-dollar profits (now around $500 billion annually) financially fuel radical Islam. Iranian cash allowed Hezbollah to acquire the sophisticated weaponry needed to achieve parity in ambushes with the Israeli Defense Forces. Unless the U.S. can find a way to force oil prices back down below $40 a barrel, Islamists may eventually be better equipped with weapons they buy than we are with munitions we make.

There are many reasons why America needs to pursue energy independence, but depriving our enemies of the money with which to buy weapons to kill us is easily the most persuasive.  If our government is serious about winning the war on terror, it will get serious about pursuing energy independence.  While it’s satisfying to kill terrorists, they’ll just make more.  The real war starts when we begin depriving them of resources rather than them depriving us.