YouTube and the Terror War

YouTube can be a pretty scary place.

I subscribe to a channel authored by a video poster named Sheikh702. He first caught my eye because he had a video referring to Osama Bin Laden as "Sheikh," the Arabic word for Elder, which is often given as a title of respect or honor. Basically, if someone is calling Osama Bin Laden "Sheikh," they are certainly more than merely sympathetic to his cause.

From that point on it gets pretty scary. Just looking at the profiles of the people who post comments on his videos is quite a trip. One guy has a backround graphic of a bunch of American Military graves and his profile description says:

"The backround picture on my channel is the grave yards of bushes capitalistic henchmen. Courtesy of the Iraqi resistance." (Siced hard.)

Like I said, YouTube is a freaky place, and it only gets worse from that point on. After spending a few minutes clicking around you begin to realize you are staring at enemy; you are watching his videos; you are reading his comments. This is a reminder to me that even though I often post about how I disagree with the Iraq War, I very much believe that the Terror War is real and that is must be won. I don't agree with the neoconservative approach to the War, but I do agree with them that it is the most trying event our generation faces. The Islamic world is in the middle of a schism: one side sees the West and wants to destroy it and the other side sees the West invading its countries and is sympathetic to the cause, and then there are a whole bunch of normal Muslims caught up in the middle.

How do we deal with Fascism with an Islamic face? The same way porcupines kiss: very carefully. And Reza Aslan has some pretty good ideas.