118For de cades the Islamist ideology has been
festering in the grass roots of Muslim po liti cal
activism. It would have been impossible for the
Islamic State to emerge if Islamism had not settled
as the default form of po liti cal expression for many
young Muslims around the world. This is why
merely condemning the Islamic State, or defeating
them militarily, is entirely insuffi cient. Similarly,
this is why previously focusing on al- Qaeda’s
military defeat has also proven to be insuffi cient.
The US killed bin Laden, yes, but something
worse (which we couldn’t have imagined prior to
al- Qaeda) emerged to replace him. This will keep
happening until and unless the ideology that breeds
these groups is discredited. Islamism must be
defeated.
The last two years of George W. Bush’s term wit-
nessed a basic recognition of this simple truth. But
as with all demo cratic handovers, Barack Obama’s
team wanted nothing to do with the previous col-
lective wisdom, including where Bush’s team had
learned from their many terrible mistakes. If the
fi rst few years of the Bush administration could
be caricatured as an attempt at imposing values at
the barrel of a gun, then President Obama’s ad-
ministration ditched the values and kept the gun.
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