The dangers before us

There's an interesting piece by Ian Buruma in The Financial Times. By contrast with some of the playpen commentators of the apologetic left, Buruma has a grasp of the dangers now before us. Dangers of a premature withdrawal of troops:

Just imagine the results if the advocates of immediate western withdrawal from the Middle East got their wish. There would be a Hobbesian mayhem of battling warlords in Afghanistan and an all-out civil war in Iraq. This might well enable a small number of bloodthirsty religious fanatics to achieve what has so far eluded them, namely to grab the power of a major Arab state, with all its resources, to carry on their holy war against all those who do not submit to their totalitarian fantasies.

And dangers facing the democracies of the West, including this one:

The murders in London are unlikely to be the last of their kind. Even worse may still be to come. Containing this is going to be hard enough. It will have to be done with due consideration for the very freedoms that extremists can exploit. But it is a conflict that can only be won if law-abiding Muslim citizens in Britain and elsewhere are made to feel that these freedoms also benefit them, and for that reason are worth defending. Distrust of the outsider, especially if he or she dresses like a follower of Islam, is bound to grow with every step of the holy war. That is part of its purpose. If the violence of a tiny minority should provoke mainstream violence against a much larger minority, the holy war will not be won, but our societies will be wrecked in the process.

Read it all. (Hat tip: HG.)