This piece is still one of most sober analysis of violence by non-state actors. And it is by a liberal magazine. There is a major inaccuracy in a statement though . “ The history of the West is every bit as violent as the modern Middle East, with brief periods of relative peace punctuated by periods of bloody conflict.” As violent as? The violence of Nazi Germany, the Belgian Genocide in Congo or the American war on the Vietnamese, just to cite three events, had no comparable examples in the history of the Middle East. The Threat is Already Inside
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51