It has been said that fundamentalist Islam is on the rise from Morocco to Pakistan in an ever widening arc. A recent report that a militant Islamic plot to overthrow the government of Morocco and set up an Islamic state is another point in favor of this thesis. Somalia has recently fallen to Islamic forces to join Sudan in that corner of Africa.

The discovery this week of the mutilated bodies of two American Marines underscores the point that the insurgency in Iraq is far from defeated. We may have cut of the head, Al-Zarqawi, but another has sprung up hydra-like to take his place.

Few speak with the clear precision of Pat Buchanan on the subject of foreign affairs. This column outlines his view of where America stands in its effort to remake the Middle East.

To his point that Islam has survived "two centuries of defeats and humiliations" I would add the larger and deeper aspect of tribalism, a social construct that goes deeper than Islam in this part of the world. This article by Steven Pressfield makes the case for the endurance of the tribe as a potent factor in this culture. Combined with religion it creates a society that America is not going to change with all of its armed might, dollars or diplomacy. Here is a brief section from his article:
 

In other words, the clash of East and West is at bottom not about religion. It's about two different ways of being in the world. Those ways haven't changed in 2,300 years. They are polar antagonists, incompatible and irreconcilable.

The West is modern and rational; its constituent unit is the nation. The East is ancient and visceral; its constituent unit is the tribe.

The tribe is the most ancient form of social organization. It arose from the hunter-gatherer clans of prehistory. A tribe is small. It consists of personal, face-to-face relationships, often of blood. A tribe is cohesive. Its structure is hierarchical. It has a leader and a rigid set of norms and customs that define each individual's role. Like a hunting band, the tribe knows who's the top dog and knows how to follow orders. What makes Islam so powerful in the world today is that its all-embracing discipline and order overlay the tribal mindset so perfectly. Islam delivers the certainty and security that the tribe used to. It permits the tribal way to survive and thrive in a post-tribal and supertribal world.

We have reached a point of imperial overreach in Iraq. Changing this part of the world into a western style democracy is not going to work.