We are completely on the wrong foot

I read (in the mid-1980s) about the kidnapping of four Soviet diplomats/embassy staff (including a cook) in Lebanon. (Internet search indicates it occured on 30 SEP 85.) I recall reading at the time about how the Islamic kidnappers demanded that the Soviets leave Lebanon, Afghanistan, etc. or the diplomats would be killed. To show that they were serious, the terrorists shot the cook and dumped his body. Within days a Soviet "wet blood" (moka della, if I remember my Russian correctly) team arrived in Beirut, kidnapped some relatives of the terroists' leaders and, to show that THEY were serious, castrated AND shot one of them before dumping his body. The Soviet hostages were released.
We are engaged in a war against people NOT like us. No, I'm not being xenophobic. While there are certain "human" values in common amongst all sane people in all cultures, an individual culture's social architecture, though ORIGINATING with those same values, can in time differ radically from other cultures, based on the specific circumstances (environmental, historical, etc.) in which that culture grew up. These differences alter the ways the individual people in that society perceive virtually everything. If you wish to influence the people who make up those societies, you have NO CHOICE but to communicate in ways that they understand through the prism of their culture. (When in Rome, do as the Romans do...so that the Romans will understand you!)
Does this mean that we have to do everything that these different societies do? NO. (If we did act like Wahabi Muslims in the aftermath of September 11, we would have acted with a view to their undoubted status as infidels and our own undoubted supremacy; therefore, acting like them we would have deliberately attacked the source of this conflict: their civilization. Even without using nuclear weapons we could have killed millions of them in response to their killing thousands of us.) We don't act like them because our Judeo-Christian ethics (filtered through the lens of the Reformation, modified by the Enlightenment, faulted by modern warfare, exposed by mass communications, and shown true by Mother Teresa and countless FAITH-derived acts of charity) PREVENT US from accepting ourselves acting in as "beastial" a manner as they do.
Does this make us better than the people we fight? By our standards, YES. (Even by most ordinary Muslims' standards, YES. Remember that almost all Muslims living outside the U.S. get highly filtered news about us and our societal standards. Given that Muslim-majority countries are almost exclusively dictatorships, that Muslims in many other countries are an ill-treated sub-caste, and that Muslims in free countries are minorities who are targeted for manipulation by freedom-resenting radicals, you can see that almost all their leaders have a vested interest in controlling/filtering information to maintain their religio-centric "purity"...or merely to maintain their own power. Therefore comparitively few Muslims get anything even vaguely resembling an objectively balanced view of American society/civilization.)
Now this doesn't mean that we as individual Americans can't act badly as they do; it just means that, as a society, we are less likely (than Muslims) to tolerate it because of our different perspective.
But now let me add a cautionary note: NO WAR IS PRETTY and SOCIETIES RARELY HAVE THE LUXURY OF DECIDING WHETHER TO FIGHT WHEN SOME ONE ELSE DECIDES TO FIGHT THEM unless, of course, that society doesn't mind being enslaved or destroyed by another. Maybe you don't like modern American society or maybe you hate your political enemies more than you love your freedom. Either way though, if you love your freedom of speech or choice, your feminine equality, or just the lives of your gay friends, the Islamic alternative is worse. And they can faithfully follow the Q'uran...while killing millions including their children (intifadah or basij)...or yours.
Many years ago, a close friend (a sargeant in Marine Corps Force Recon) was escorting a new Marine lieutenant and a Navy medical corpsman delivering supplies and medicine by CH-53 helicopter to a Moro Muslim village on the Philipine island of Mindanow. As the residents gathered around them, my friend, standing beside the lieutenant and with the corpsman, in turn, beside him, watched as one young male villager began to work his way through the crowd and around toward the side on which the corpsman was standing. Sensing that something was wrong, my friend popped the retaining strap on his holster and pulled the sailor behind him just as the villager bent forward and charged. (Male Moros often carry a barong, a large knife with a leaf-shaped blade across their backs and they bend forward to draw and swing it in one motion. They believe that a man does not become a warrior man until he has killed another man.) My friend drew immediately and, as Jeff Cooper had taught him, shot the young man twice in the chest. The barong went flying and landed in the dirt, as did the young Muslim. At age sixteen his life was over because his benighted ideas caused him to want to murder the three Americans who were doing a good thing for his people. And though no one would fault my friend for his action, even now, almost thirty years later, he can still see that boy's face.
Pray that for Muslims that their Reformation and Enlightenment come soon, before their radicals actions (and their acceptance, whether tacit or enthusiastic, of those actions) take away our luxury of choice and make us HAVE to treat them like they would treat us.
God, please let it not be so. In Jesus Name, Amen.

yeah, but DT, how do you REALLY feel? ;)

Until our politicians say "It's Islam", we are going to lose this war because of our wretched and absurd denial of who are what the enemy is. And it isn't "terror" as in war on terror.

And what does the West send to negotiate with tribal warlords? Bureaucrats.

I happen to agree here with Bush on one point, however. There is no reason Gitmo needs to remain an indefinite center of detention for enemy combatants. Once a combatant has been mined for all key intelligence, they should be put before a military tribunal, pro forma, then executed. They will not be returned home. They will not see civilian courts. Their good fortune in not being killed in the operation that netted them will have run out.

The constant harping by EU cognoscenti should be dealt with as unapologeticaly as in the above post--not because it will knock any sense into these European leaders but because it is our prerogative to do so, because we are in the right.

Until our politicians say "It's Islam", we are going to lose this war because of our wretched and absurd denial of who are what the enemy is. And it isn't "terror" as in war on terror.