Obama's (Singular) Potential to End Terrorism

It's ironic that the new Washington Post poll numbers show McCain significantly besting Obama (only) on the question of terrorism - because Obama provides, in the end, a counter terror tool that McCain can never match, and which ultimately may be the most vital in our toolbox.

It's likely either president will prosecute the war on terror as well as (and surely more thoughtfully and subtlety than) President Bush has (i.e., I don't see Obama going soft on Terror in his first term, since it's such a questionable leadership issue for him). And, arguably, continued prosecution would lead ultimately to the end of Al Qaeda as a/the major terror network throughout the world. But that still leaves the independent, radicalized, would-be terrorists that have become - for around half the counterterror policy establishment, no less - the most central aspect of terrorism today (and, more importantly, tomorrow).

Obama can fight this aspect of terrorism by showing Muslims throughout the world who are disaffected because of social alienation in a sometimes-suffocating but still often-distant western society; and who channel that disaffection into deadly anger toward America, that ther e's hope (and much more than hope) for them, exactly as they exist. That people of their background (sons and daughters of men and women once dismissively referred to by Anglos as colonials or natives) may count on having a true place (indeed, the very top place) in the Western wold, and in a Pax Americana. A President Obama means that both western society and hegemonic America have embraced an African American with a Muslim name - and by doing so, they have truly embraced the whole world - fulfilling a long held goal, in America's case.