Unless we can come to understand the logic of fanaticism, despite all its alien and repugnant qualities in our eyes, we will continue to see rays of hope in the Middle East where there are none. You can kill the fanatic; but you cannot kill his fanaticism. It has a life of its own, and a will to match. Worse, what is enough to make sober and prudent men change their minds works exactly the opposite on the fanatic -- it gives him renewed conviction. Thus, those who do mourn the death of al-Zarqawi will not see in his loss the end of their struggle, but only an inspiration to struggle all the harder. For them, al-Zarqawi is not dead; he has gone to collect his martyr's crown. He will now watch them safely from Paradise, urging them on, and inspiring them with his memory.
That's why I have been saying all along that this is a war that the United States very well may not win if it doesn't get serious about. Religion is totally different from politics, even when religion attempts to become political as is the case with Islamism. Communism was defeated because our enemies sought an earthly outcome, and thus our military efforts were able to demonstrably impact their utopian worldview. Since everything was on this side of eternity, especially the results, everything could be affected by efforts made by our military and economy. However, the key component with Islamism is the eternal paradise, and that paradise just so happens to be facilitated by direct armed confrontation with our military. It would be almost like fighting the Cold War against Communist countries that believed that fighting and dying to advance the proletarian revolution was the highest goal of Communism, and that the creation of a Communist state here and now did not matter so long as their efforts one day made it come to pass.
The Islamist streak has existed in Islam since the very beginning of the religion, and it always will. The scriptures have a violent streak in them that, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't exist in any other world religion. There is violence in the Old Testament, but it is focused on specific groups for a specific time and action (conquestion of Israel by the Jews, for example). There is no other major religion that has a scripture-level concept analogous to jihad. For non-Muslims and even non-Islamist Muslims who really do reject Islamism, Islamist jihad will be a fact of life as long as Islam itself exists.
The only solution that will ultimately end Islamic terrorism is to attack the very pillars of Islam. The true believers will reject what are clearly non-divine reforms, just as conservative Roman Catholics often reject Vatican II. Simply taking out the violent passages in the Koran as "un-Islamic" is not going to change anything with the extremists. Instead, we must look at the scripture itself as the root cause of their fanaticism. Our most dangerous enemies aren't the poor man with the AK-47, but the middle and upper class, well-educated terrorists. Poverty isn't a root cause here because there are millions of poor, peaceful Muslims who live side-by-side peacefully with non-Muslims in countries like Israel, Lebanon and Albania.
If the threat of Islamic terrorism cannot be contained, and does continue to grow increasingly dangerous, the US and its non-Islamic allies will have to consider destroying the Ka'ba. The Ka'ba is the great mosque in Mecca that forms a key part of the Muslim hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam. Though it is architecturally beautiful and a world history treasure, it is not worth the human life that continues to be lost around the world to armed incursions between Islamists and their conservative Islamic ideological sympathizers and everyone else. Visibly reducing to mildly irradiated ash, the most sacred site in Islam would do more to end the threat of Islamic terrorism in the long run than any occupation, and ironically, it would also save significantly more lives among Muslims and non-Muslims than any policy currently up for consideration.
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