Losing the Information War

The underlying reason why America is doing so poorly in the field of 'information warfare' against the jihad is that its traditional organs of articulation–the academy, media, Hollywood–are largely hostile to the war on terror itself. It's conceivable that an Iranian might flee persecution only to be taught at a U.S. university that he ought to embrace it by the many academic departments whose point of view is exactly that. In a fundamental sense, the war on terror is twinned to the greatest single issue dividing the left and the right, which is whether the United States, as a nation, is legitimate or whether, as some would maintain, it is Amerika: an abomination whose demise must be hastened by any means necessary.

That (from The Belmont Club) just about says it.

It could be objected that there is no need to adopt either of these extremes, that the latter view is just a Straw Man erected by the Right to better fight the war at home. And indeed there are many who are against the war for quite respectable reasons. But the problem is that neither Hollywood nor the Academy deal in subtleties; the second, infected with the virus of revolutionary politics for the last 40 years, goes down either the road of relativism ('it's just their way and we must respect that') or that of grandstanding from the moral high ground ('against the oppression of capitalism'). They provide no alternative, no policy except for opposition to the US.