My thoughts exactly. The Diplomad blog captures the mess we are in with Islam:
We are now paying for the stupidity of removing the nasty, desert drag queen [Gaddaffi] who had long ago ceased being a threat to America and, in fact, was an ally (I have personal knowledge of this) in tracking down Al Qaeda terrorists. It was likewise an even bigger mistake, one on the scale of Carter and the Shah, to help push President Mubarak out of power, welcome the Muslim Brotherhood, and pressure the Egyptian military into accepting the MB. We can see the results on our TV sets, in the idiotic behavior of our diplomats in Cairo (and I know a lot of them, including the Ambassador)–and in the media’s never-ending quest to protect Obama and his foolishness, and give him a pass.
The reason we see deranged or at least nasty and unpleasant dictators in the Arab world is that Arab societies are deranged, nasty and unpleasant–thanks largely to the brand of Islam practiced in those societies which is particularly deranged, nasty, and unpleasant. In the Arab world you can have a brutal authoritarian who tries to restrain the even more brutal religious fanatics, or you can have religious fanatics who lash out at anyone who does not see the world as they do. It is for this reason, for example, that I do not join in the enthusiasm for helping the Syrian rebels against the brutal pencil-necked Assad family. What do you think will replace the thug Assad, who is at least a moderately rational actor and responds somewhat to pressure from the Russians and others? Notice that the Israelis are quite conflicted about the rebellion in Syria; they don’t say much about it. Just as I could not understand in the 1980s what interest we had in bringing an end to the Iran-Iraq war, I see no particular reason to get involved in Syria. No result will be a good one . . . literally.
The problem is not one regime or another. The problem is not creating yet another Arab state in “Palestine.” The problem is not our insensitivity. The problem is Arab Islam. The deep, deep pathologies of Arab Islamic societies are out for all to see . . . yet again. And our great, overpaid liberal mass media with all their highly “educated” anchors and pundits, what are they covering? They are attacking Governor Romney for daring to say that we should never apologize for our core beliefs. The media and many at State, including the increasingly unhinged Hillary Clinton, claim that the unrest we now see in the Arab world, unrest which takes the form of attacking US embassies and murdering our people, is due to some obscure video made in July by some obscure person who has yet to be fully identified. Perhaps, then, it was in anticipation of this film that Osama bin-Ladin had his crazies fly planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center? Wouldn’t be a surprise for the media to allege that . . .
Bush understood what the sophisticates at State, in the universities, and the media did not: we are in a titanic, multi-generational conflict with the forces of Islamic jihadism. He spoke the hard truths and was reviled for it. I think that Governor Romney understands that truth, too.