Of course you can define who the enemy isn't. We're pretty sure the enemy isn't moon men from Venus, after all. It's certainly within the capability of logic to rule things out.

I think I may have been unclear. When I said the west was engaged in a struggle with the "Muslim" world, I put the quotes in because I was being facetious. I don't think defining the conflict was west vs Islam (or, god forbid, Christian vs Islam) is accurate or helpful, which is why I was arguing against the concept Tukhachevskii put forward--he stated that Islam is inherently a religion which conflicts with western interest, and I disagreed. To the extent that it's anti-western, so is Christianity and almost any other religion you could name.

Given that many of those we are incontrovertibly in conflict with--as evidenced by the fact that they're shooting at us and trying to blow us up--are Muslim, though, it's useful to clarify that the conflict doesn't (despite their claims, as well as the claims of certain western blowhards) spring from the fact that they're Muslim and we're not. If we don't make that division clear, we'll end up fighting half the planet. And quite possibly losing.

What we're in conflict with is a socioeconomic class. They're poor enough to be angry, but close enough to our fantastic wealth to be able to use certain features of it--our communication and transportation networks--against us to great effect. People don't like to think of themselves as jealous or greedy, so yeah, they wrap their conflict in their religion to make their anger more palatable to themselves (just as many in the west choose to view the conflict in terms of ideology in order to escape having to acknowledge the role their own wealth plays). But it's about haves and have-nots doing their usual dance.