The War Is Over?

"The war on terror is over," or so claims an unnamed senior State Department official, as reported by National Journal's Michael Hirsh in his recent article "The Post al-Qaida Era."

Really? Well, if the war is over, I must have missed the peace treaty signing ceremony. I also haven't noticed a decline in incendiary rhetoric, or the disarmament -- or at least laying down of arms -- that usually accompanies the end of war. Does this mean we can do away with full-body scanners and TSA pat-downs?

Those who believe the war against radical Islamists is over never really believed we were fighting one. They have been in denial from the start. Each time they have been proven wrong -- the land for peace formula between Israel and her enemies is just one example among many -- they have simply moved on to the next level of denial. Now they have reached rock bottom with nowhere else to go and are telling us we can live with Islamism.

Hirsh references Reuel Marc Gerecht, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan institution focusing on national security and foreign policy, whom he calls one of the "smarter hardliners on the Right." Hirsh says Gerecht is among an emerging group of policymakers and analysts coming to realize that "the Arab world may find another route to democracy -- through Islamism."

This is preposterous. It is like saying the route to women's rights is through patriarchy. War is peace. George Orwell lives! Radical Islamists have made it perfectly clear they have no interest in joining the democratic process. They are at war. They are at war with the West. No amount of "make-nice" will stop them from trying to destroy Western infidels, which they consider all proponents of democracy to be.

Gerecht's kind of thinking is beyond self-delusional. It is suicidal. Any hope that the Arab Spring and the Middle East elections that result will make any difference in the way radical Islamists deal with or perceive the West is misplaced. Elections are meaningless without a framework guaranteeing individual rights. History is full of examples where elections brought to power dictators who then either gamed the system so their re-election was guaranteed or made sure there were no more elections.

Closer to reality is a report in the April 15 London Sunday Times. Reporter Hala Jaber writes from Cairo about the forthcoming Egyptian elections: "Voters fear the imposition of the veil and a harsh penal code if radicals win the election."

Ask the radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada if he thinks the war against the West, which is the proper way of framing this conflict, is over. British Home Secretary Theresa May has possibly blown an opportunity to deport Qatada because of a bureaucratic snafu over a deadline for his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Now there is a good chance that Qataba, described by a judge in Spain as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, could be released from prison instead of being deported to Jordan as planned.

Just because the leadership of al-Qaida has been killed, imprisoned or forced to run, does not mean that the fighting stops. In fact, though the "war on terror" may be over as a concept, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor assured Michael Hirsh, the war against al-Qaida rages on. But the war is much broader than al-Qaida. Terrorism flows from a belief system and worldview that will not be crushed because a few al-Qaida leaders are gone.

The secular left refuses to understand this. Terrorism is not the only tool in the arsenal of radical Islamists. Infiltration, Islamic schools, the building of mosques in the midst of the "Great Satan," the running of Muslim candidates for public office, the demands for more "rights" and civil liberties, while Islamists deny such things to the nations they dominate -- all of this and more proves the war by whatever name one wishes to call it is not over. In fact, it is just beginning.

Radical Islamists are attempting to unify the Muslim world under Sharia law and other dictates of the extremist wing of the religion. If they succeed, they will most assuredly redouble their efforts to eliminate Israel and come after America.

"Even if the leftist dimocraps"

You're trying to break it out along a republican vs democrat line or left vs right line.

It actually breaks out along foreign policy doctrines. It is the NeoCon republicans and the Liberal Interventionist democrats. In fact, he is using the republican NeoCon think tank, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, as an example.

We characterize the NeoCon republicans and Liberal Interventionists democrats as foreign policy Idealists because they both advocate for a foreign policy heavy on humanitarianism and nation building/democracy spreading. But these groups differ in that the Liberal Interventionists are multilateralists and the NeoCons are unilateralists.

On the the other side you have the foreign policy Realists aka pragmatists(republican and democrats) who are not opposed to humanitarianism and democracy building, only that those actions should be seperate from foreign policy.

The impetus for democracy building in the Mideast and North Africa(MENA) began in 1996 when Netanyahu gave a speech to Congress in which he urged the US to democratize the Mideast.

Libya is a good example.

Last year when events in Libya began unfolding, the republican NeoCons immediately began agitating for Obama to intervene, Eliot Cohen wrote his article in WSJ and Paul Wolfowitz in NYT. Realist Bob Gates urged Obama not to intervene. But before long, the Liberal Interventionists had reached a multilateral agreement with NATO that was supported by the Arab League so Obama intervened.

The republican NeoCons praised Obama for intervening but criticized him for taking so long and for doing it multilaterally, leading from behind. Some of the extremist NeoCons like John Bolton criticized obama saying he didn't go far enough and Obama needed to put boots on the ground in Libya.

Then two prominent Realists, Kissinger and Baker, wrote their article in WaPo warning that Libya could blow up in Obama'a face and the US should be more realistic. The anti-war pacifist democrats(kucinich) began calling for the impeachment of Obama.

Then the House republicans thought that might try to play some politics with Libya. So those 43 prominant NeoCons wrote and signed the letter to the House republicans urging them to support intervening in Libya, so the House republicans quickly dropped it.

Whenever you look at a foreign policy issue, you need to recognize that there are three republican foreign policy groups: Realists, NeoCons, and isolationists. And that there are 3 democrat foreign policy groups: Realists, Liberal Interventionists, and anti-war pacifists.

Thru-out 2009 and 2010, the Realists were controlling Obama's foreign policy but the power shifted to the Liberal Interventionists in 2011.

Obama will take direct credit for all of this just as he is using BJ Clinton to shill for him in a campaign commercial saying the Obama killed Bin Laden single handedly.

Obama’s ‘Gutsy’ Bin Laden Call
April 27, 2012
By Lonely Conservative

Bill Clinton – the man who let Osama Bin Laden get away – appeared in a new Obama campaign ad saying that if Mitt Romney was president Bin Laden would still be alive. (As a side note, during the 2008 primary Obama accused Clinton of using Bin Laden to score political points.) So, it’s kind of funny that on the same day the ad came out a memo was uncovered documenting Obama’s “gutsy” call.

Bill Clinton Praises Pres. Obama for bin Laden Strike (VIDEO)

http://www.prunejuicemedia.com/2012/bill-clinton-praises-pres-obama-for-bin-laden-strike-video/

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