Bush critics say US is losing war on terror [Losing the war of ideas]

Bush critics say US is losing war on terror - Yahoo! News

Remember back when people talked about the War on Terror really being a War of Ideas?

At core, hasn't it always been a matter of radical Muslim extremists bent on their jihad against the, as they see it, infidels?

The radical Muslim extremists have their idea of how the world should be, and the rest of us (non-radical Muslims as well) think otherwise, thereby making us the enemy infidels.

So, there are opposing ideas of right and wrong, and of how people should live.

We haven't been doing so well on our side impressing the world with how our ideas are so much better than the jihadists. We have not won over the hearts and souls of the people of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.

From the article:

"We have had some very important successes getting individual terrorists. But I think the broader story is really quite awful. We have done a lot to fuel the fires, and we have done a lot to encourage people to hate us"...

And this from the article: "And not even al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, they say, could have dreamed the United States would stumble so badly in the court of Muslim public opinion."

Note that this article does end with some suggestions on how we can improve our odds in this War of Ideas.

After all, we will never "simply" hunt down and kill all the jihadists - there will always be more. That is why this War on Terror is really about a War of Ideas.