International relations isn't a popularity contest. But public opinion polls can be useful in countering myths and examining the impact of policymaker, elite, and media campaigns on the masses.

Which brings us to Gallup's latest poll measuring how Americans feel about different countries. The more one examines the results, the more amazing they are. Americans two favorites are, not surprisingly, fellow English-speakers Canada and the United Kingdom. Then come-Americans are very forgiving-two former enemies, Germany and Japan.

The Gospel writers have noted that Jesus called his disciples to a way of life in which any act of violence can be overcome by love. We must not return evil for evil, Jesus taught, but must return good for evil; we must not hate those who wrong us but must love our enemies and pray for those who hate us. The Qur'an never says this. Instead it explicitly declares that Allah does not love those who do not believe in him:

"For He loves not those who reject Faith" (30:45)

"Perhaps before Muslim bleat about their rights, they should first begin honoring the rights of non-Muslims."

Over the last decade the treatment of Muslims has dominated discussions about human rights in Europe, the United States and Israel. Whether it's Jihadis seized on the battlefields of Afghanistan, domestic terrorists plotting death and destruction in London, Ramallah or Jersey City, asylum seekers from the coasts of Australia to England, or your regular old Abdul or Hamid who may be a law abiding citizen or a fanatical mass murderer in waiting-- the Western human rights debate over the last 10 years comes down to the treatment of Muslims.

City-Journal

Enormous, massively destructive engagements may again be on the horizon

Have we not seen, then, in our lifetime the end of the Western way of war?" Two decades ago, I concluded The Western Way of War with that question. Since Western warfare had become so lethal and included the specter of nuclear escalation, I thought it doubtful that two Western states could any longer wage large head-to-head conventional battles.

A decade earlier, John Keegan, in his classic The Face of Battle, had similarly suggested that it would be hard for modern European states to engage in infantry slugfests like the Battle of the Somme. "The suspicion grows," Keegan argued of a new cohort of affluent and leisured European youth-rebellious in spirit and reluctant to give over the good life to mass conscription-"that battle has already abolished itself."