BEST THING TO DO IS JUST LET HIM FINISH

Excellent couple of posts by Rob Farley at LGM regarding Stanley Kurtz's Huntington-humping.

The money:

So, instead of inter-civilizational conflict, we see intra-civilizational conflict, which, I will note, has been evident in the Western world for the last, oh, 2600 years. Instead of the Islamic and Confucian worlds lining up together against the West, we see what can only be described as the collusion of the major Confucian powers with the premier power of the West, against, oddly enough, the rest of the West. Call me a skeptic, but I'm not sure Huntington deserves any credit here.

Intra-civilizational conflict is the more accurate way to describe what is going on within the Islamic world right now, as well. Obviously, at this point the United States is deeply involved in that conflict, but it's important to understand that the U.S. first became a target for Islamist rage not "because of who we are," as George W. Bush claimed, but because we were seen as having propped up unjust, un-Islamic governments.