Sully has an quotation from Lou Dobbs that I find rather revealing. Check it out:

...the enemies in this war are radical Islamists who argue all non-believers in their faith must be killed. They are called Islamists. That's why we are abandoning the phrase, "War Against Terror". Let us be clear. This is not a war against Muslims or Islam. It is a war against Islamists and all who support them.

Ok, so let me get this straight. It's a war against "Islamists", not Muslims. The former are our enemy because they are taught to hate us, but the latter aren't because... it doesn't? I had thought it was the same religion... so who are we fighting? Are we just fighting Wahhabi Islam, and if so what happens if somebody over here happens to believe in that particular type of Islam? Do we lock them up, simply shoot them, or is the term "Islamist" more to do with where the person is instead of who they are? Does it have something to do with conversion, and should we therefore just start arresting those Muslims who try to convert people to their religion? (What does that mean for Christians? Do we have to shut down all the outreach centres because of "Christism"?

The right side of the web (and the punditry) has been working overtime trying to portray Muslims as bloodthirsty medieval scum who should be wiped off the face of the earth or (at the very least) "reeducated". David Horowitz seems to be trying to build a career on this concept; Ann Coulter has already built a reputation. This isn't exactly surprising, and any American who knows a moderate, intelligent Muslim knows was a load of nonsense the entire thing is. The statelessness of the "war on terrorism", though, is starting to turn it by degrees into what its critics were (unjustly) calling it earlier: a war on Islam. There is no doubt that the right side of the punditry has declared war on Islam (or at least the parts that they don't like), but CNN trying to maintain these sorts of counter-intuitive distinctions between Muslims and "Islamists" reminds me of the little boy sticking his finger into the dyke. It just goes to show (as if the wag-the-dog enterprise of shoehorning Iraq into the warn didn't) that after Afghanistan, this war is becoming a farce.