Former President George W. Bush was a lot of things, but one thing he wasn't was soft. He responded to the attack on 9/11 by invading not one but two countries, authorized the use of torture and indefinite detention and launched a mass surveillance program. When the occupation of Iraq turned against the U.S., he surged more troops at it.
Bush did all of this, he felt, to keep the country safe. (He was wrong, of course; his decisions essentially created the self-described Islamic State.) But there was one more thing he did, not because he was soft or in the grips of political correctness, but because he knew it would make the country safer: He embraced Muslims and regularly referred to Islam as a "religion of peace." Whatever horrors befell Muslims overseas on Bush's orders, here at home, he worked to be as inclusive of the Muslim community as possible.
Surprising as it may seem today, that effort mostly worked. Anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political parties in Europe have stirred up a tremendous amount of Islamophobia there, and such attitudes naturally drive feelings of anger and betrayal. For a young man or woman on the edge, it can be just enough to push them into radicalization, and it's not a coincidence that Europe has seen far more homegrown attacks. Yet we here in the U.S. seem to be barreling headlong for that same cliff.
