Politically whatever
Approvingly linking Nick Denton's spew regarding our need to (I quote) "humiliate the Arab world, and dispel the Islamic millenial fantasy" Glenn Reynolds goes on to say:
He's right of course, and I suspect (and hope) the Bush Administration has thought of all this. It's just politically incorrect to say it.
But why? The people who would object are always saying that it's a good learning experience when the United States is humiliated.
"Politically (in)correct" at this point has devolved to the point where it's come to mean "any stupid thing that comes into my head, no matter how racist or unthoughtful or just plain fucking dumb, is legitimate discourse, and if you even think about criticizing it, you're engaging in censorship and guilty of being politically correct." It's a quick and stupid attempt to head off dispute. Maybe not so stupid, since the right seems to have been able to paralyze the left with this sort of imbecility. It's not that you shouldn't be able to say it, free speech is an absolute as far as I'm concerned, but you should also expect to be called up on the carpet for it. "Politically correct" is little more than trying - far too often successfully - to shut the other side up completely while you spray your bilge.
In any case, it's not a matter of dispelling the "Islamic millennial fantasy" (as if Christianity lacks any millennial fantasies of its own - can you say "The Rapture?"), it's a matter of stopping fundmentalist elements of Islam that remind me strongly of fundamentalist Christians in this country, in rhetoric if not in the extent of their actions. If Jerry Falwell doesn't represent all Christians in this country, then you can't say that millennialist Muslims represent all of Islam. No matter how much you need that reasoning to justify warmongering "the Other."