The beat goes on.

Editor,

Al Qaeda are not the only Islamist extremists on the planet, and military occupations are the most counterproductive strategy to counter them. Guerrilla groups are entirely dependent on the support of people who sympathize with them: financiers, weapons suppliers, foot soldiers, and officials and others who harbor them.

So it is a question of sympathy, not a question of force. Whose policies, whose ambitions, whose rhetoric resonate more convincingly with the masses in the Muslim world?

If Westerners and Western governments and Mr. Obama himself are persuaded by the speech he gave last night but large swaths of the Muslim world are not, perhaps another tune is in order.

But the corporate imperative requires that force be employed to beat Western capitalism's enemies into submission because there is no backing off, there is too much money is to be made. So our military makes more enemies, and the beat goes on.

re: "Obama Outlines a Vision of Might and Right" (12/12/2009)