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What else should they have said? This was useful propaganda. In order to effectively fight the people who had attacked us Al Qaeda the US needed the cooperation of the worlds Muslim governments and the world's Muslims. Obviously the attacks were motivated by an Islamic ideology but equally obviously declaring war on the world's 1.8 Billion Muslims would serve no purpose. You lament that people understood that something "needed to be done about Islam" but what do you propose? What we got was the GWOT with US special forces fighting Islamic extremists globally. What do you suppose should have been done instead the religion has now 2 billion followers and 1.8 billion at the time. What Bush said was strategic to help Americans fight Al Qaeda and channel rage, what good would pograms against Arab shopkeepers in America
Contrary to this belief most Muslims and Islamic governments don't act like ISIS. This is a common insistence among conservatives but the world would look a lot different if they did. Most Arab governments are sluggish and corrupt not motivated by fanatical dreams of world conquest and the democratic Muslim countries also don't elect people like that. In the face of that it would seem that Islam isn't bent on those things even if you think they should be. Now I'm not saying that there isn't a dangerous current of extremism running through Sunni Islam that attracts young men to these Salafist ideologies or that we should let millions of unskilled Muslim refugees into Western Countries. But the average Muslim or Muslim politician is not bent on conquering the world they aren't the borg. Also for an existential threat a majority of Arab governments are American allies and far more concerned about Iran then invading the infidel west and taking concubines.
The Dixie Chicks argued aganst the war in Iraq this is the quote;
And they got cancelled hard for it this was an era when people's blood was up and unmoderated internet comments basically any news story touhgign the wars had people saying we should nuke Mecca and Medina. And the Dixie chicks were proven right,, the Bush administration cynically channeled rage against Islamist extremism into overthrowing a secular dictator do to their own Neocon fantasies. Neocon foreign policy at the time was utterly delusional they thought creating a democratic Iraq based on conservative economics would create a booming new American ally and unleash a collapse of Arab autocracies has had happened with Communism in Eastern Europe. These fantasies were what American rage was channeled towards and the invasion of Iraq ended up being the biggest boon for Islamic extremism possible. It removed a secular check against Iran and provided fertile ground for Al Qaeda and later ISIS to bloom. Introducing any sort of democracy to Iraq naturally made them much more pro Iran, and it had the effect of convincing many Muslims the US war really was against Islam. Not to mention it was an immoral farce a ginned up war of aggression without proper casus belli, and a gigantic waste of taxpayer money.
People were over the wars by 2010 because they realized supporting Shia Islamists and child raping warlords wasn't making America any safer. The American security state has good handle on preventing terrorist attacks at home. Such a good handle most of the people they arrest these days is basically entrapment. The global war on terror was bad enough a global war on Islam like you seem to want would be catastrophic.
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