Have they already won?

Remember back in the days right after 9/11 when there was a phrase going around – it turned into a joke, actually – that if we didn’t do so and so or such and such, then “the terrorists have already won?” As in, “If we don’t go out to the shopping malls to buy Christmas presents, the terrorists will have already won.”
Remember that? That’s what I’m thinking about these days. Ever since the election, a lot of pundits on the right have been worrying over what Obama will do when Al Qaeda inevitably hits us again. Will he be tough enough? Will he hit back, and hit back hard? He says he will, of course. And maybe he would.
But what if Al Qaeda doesn’t hit us again? And not because they’ve suddenly learned to love us. What if Al Qaeda doesn’t hit us again because they’ve figured out that, with Obama’s election, they have already won. What if they’ve decided that America will no longer stand in the way of their oft-stated and clear ambition to bring the entire globe under the house of Islam? What if they figure out they’ve already won?
And there’s an irony here. During the Clinton administration, the approach to dealing with jihad was to treat it as a matter for law enforcement and the courts. It was Bush who decided that we needed to treat jihad as a military matter - that is, as a matter of war. Now, the tables have turned: Jihad will go forward, of course, as by doctrine it must. But it no longer needs to be carried out as a war or by other violent means. As Obama settles in, as his judiciary takes shape (and it will make rulings for the next generation and more), jihad will prevail in our courts. Quietly, inexorably, inserting itself into the fabric of our national life, just as it is already doing in the old Europe.