Thanks for the post.

I continue to be concerned over our seeming lack of interest in understanding our enemy. I fear that we really are not getting it, and while we can probably beat al Queda down in the short term, the larger Islamist threat remains beyond our ken.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

I read a book title What Went Wrong I don't remember the author but even though it wasn't specifically about fundamentalist in the Muslim society it basically showed how there is almost know flow of knowledge back and forth (I think only 4 book where translated from a western language to arabic and only 8 where translated from arabic to a western language in the last couple of years). Its dry as hell with a lot of history but I was ignorant of how much more advanced the middle eastern countries were over Europe until the 1600's or so.

Bernard Lewis - I like his books although there definitely is a camp that doesn't like him at all.

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