Glenn is Wrong; Warren is Right !

A few days ago, writing about the maelstorm over the Dubai Ports deal, I said the following:

Seems like the sale of a number of ports to Dubai has really ripped the lid off the bubbling cauldron of the American wartime psyche...
The most startling observation is that despite the constant media drumbeat that we are the bad guys and Islam is a religion of peace, it appears as if Americans have a pretty good idea of who the enemy is, and what he is capable of. Such a visceral response to a foreign affairs issue is so rare...that it demands an accounting for.

Glenn Renyolds, our venerable Instapundit; stresses over the implications of the reaction to the port:

...Jim Geraghty, blogging from Turkey, wonders if we're seeing a tipping point in Western attitudes toward Islam. Geraghty collects a lot of quotes, and writes of "my sense that in recent weeks, a large chunk of Americans just decided that they no longer have any faith in the good sense or non-hostile nature of the Muslim world..."

Osama and the Islamists want to see an all-out war between Islam and the West. If this happens, Islam will rapidly become a tiny remnant of its current self. You can worry about port security if you want...but casting this in terms that suggest that we're at war with all Arabs, or all Muslims, just buys into the Islamists' apocalyptic scenario. I don't like to see people in America, by pandering to stereotypes, doing that.

But professor, are we "pandering to stereotypes", or simply learning from history? Via Little Green Footballs, we get an essay from David Warren called Oncoming (although I would have named it Incoming!):

The world in which we will find ourselves, a few years hence, will not resemble the world we inhabited a few years ago. Yet this is among the few predictions that can be safely made. The events will fall out as unpredictably as those Danish cartoons. The names, dates, and places are not yet recorded; but the shape and scale of events is already blotting the sun on our horizon.

Even after the experience of the Great War, and the Depression, people on the eve of the Hitler war could not appreciate what was coming. It is only in retrospect that we understand what happened as the 1930s progressed -- when a spineless political class, eager at any price to preserve a peace that was no longer available, performed endless demeaning acts of appeasement to the Nazis; while the Nazis created additional grievances to extract more.

This is precisely what is happening now, as we are confronted by the Islamist fanatics, whose views and demands are already being parroted by fearful “mainstream” Muslim politicians. We will do anything to preserve a peace that ceased to exist on 9/11. Not one of our prominent politicians dares even to name the enemy...

Germany was full of moderate Germans, as Hitler rose; Stalin drove his oars through a sea of moderate Russians. While we must not forget that the Muslims are the first victims of “Islamism”, and may suffer most from its triumph, we are beyond the point where we can do more for them than destroy the tyranny by which they are enthralled.

Mr. Warren beats our esteemed Professor Reynolds on points. Glenn reminds us that Osama wants war with the West, and implies if he gets it, he's won.
Well, not exactly. If we pulverize the Middle East the way we may need to, in order to cleanly win a war without years of Iraq-type insurgancies, the face of Islam, much like the face of National Socialist Germany and Dynastic Japan, will be forever altered. And not in a way that Osama bin Laden would approve, mind you. Islam would still be the key religious model in the region, but not the driving force behind political/territorial manuevers.

David Warren points out clearly the parallels with the 1930's here (even without the requisite reminder of fascism's love for Jew-extermination). The American people see the parallels quite clearly, and all of the "religion of peace" nonsense, whether from bloggers or Presidents, is not going to convince them to ignore the evidence of their own eyes.
The American spirit does not allow for dhimmitude. Lord knows we almost rented the nation apart a century and a half ago over a different type of slavery. Mentally, the American people are ready to fight now, to avoid leaving a bloodier battle to their children shortly down the road.

Do the politicians, here and abroad, have the same will as their constituents?