World War IV and the struggle against prosperity

Siggy has an interesting post, as is usual with him (emphasis added),

The ideologies of Radical Islamism are very clear and have not changed since September 11,2001. The goal is to destroy, punish and subjugate non believers. The real enemy are free peoples. Freedom is antithetical to terrorism because freedom usurps the power of the terrorist. With out the power to instill fear and punishment, the terrorist is nothing. The icon of freedom is the US, of course. Our freedoms, success and ever growing potential are what the terrorist must destroy. Prosperity is the terrorists fifth column. They cannot abide by a culture that is prosperous, because that culture seeks growth and progress. The terrorists cannot abide progress. That too, weakens their hold.

I firmly believe that the most free societies are the societies where people are allowed to prosper, regardless of their religion. This depends not only on the society, but of course, on the individiual himself.

Just this morning the WSJ had a front-page article on Azim Premji the world's richest Muslim. As he himself states (emphasis added),

In an interview at Wipro's sleek Bangalore campus, which had just been visited by a group of Israeli businessmen, Mr. Premji scoffed at the idea he should display his Muslim identity or champion the cause of Muslim advancement in India. "We've always seen ourselves as Indian. We've never seen ourselves as Hindus, or Muslims, or Christians or Buddhists," he said.

These secularist values came to him naturally. There was no madrassa in Mr. Premji's own education. He attended a Mumbai Catholic school, St. Mary's, and then studied electrical engineering at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

Also in today's WSJ, Norman Podhoretz has a terrific article, 'America the Ugly', where he discusses the politics of the Left:

It is impossible at this point to predict how and when the battle of Iraq will end. But from the vitriolic debates it has unleashed we can already say for certain that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, did not do to the Vietnam syndrome what Pearl Harbor did to the old isolationism. The Vietnam syndrome is back and it means to have its way. But is it strong enough in its present incarnation to do what it did to the honor of this country in 1975? Well acquainted though I am with its malignant power, I still believe that it will ultimately be overcome by the forces opposed to it in the war at home. Even so, I cannot deny that this question still hangs ominously in the air and will not be answered before more damage is done to the long struggle against Islamofascism into which we were blasted six years ago and that I persist in calling World War IV.

Islamofacists and Leftists alike despise the benefits of freedom and prosperity, and that is the essence of World War IV.

Roger L. Simon reviews Norman Podhoretz's World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism at Pajamas Media today.

Amazon is not listing World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism yet, but I'll link to it as soon as they do.