Posted on 04/17/2004 9:17:44 AM PDT by quidnunc
If that's the case then we're talking about every Islamic nation on earth. And this hostile "strain" of Islam he speaks of is a majority strain.
It is easy to criticize through over simplification. That is a complex problem, not one of simply turning off the tap.
| Christianity | 2 Billion |
| Islam | 1.2 Billion |
| Hinduism | 785 Million |
Yeah, the greatest one the world will never miss!
There's a demand for Pax Americana and, judging by President George Bush's press conference this week, the United States is ready to supply it. The Bush administration seems anything but wobbly. Even so, one wonders if the President and his advisors fully realize what the task entails. To put the genie of anti-civilizational ruthlessness back into its bottle, to defeat terrorist despotism from the nuclear labs of North Korea to the alleys of Falluja and the caves of al-Qaeda in the Hindu Kush, America will need to reconsider decades of ultra-liberalism and political correctness, and revert to earlier models of national purpose.
SPECIFICALLY, THE UNITED STATES WILL HAVE TO:
1. Regard any hostile power that attempts to acquire or develop weapons of mass destruction, or refuses to sign and abide by a non-proliferation agreement, as a belligerent state. Such countries must be exposed to the traditional consequences of belligerency, from blockades to possible invasion.
2. Acknowledge that, while Islam is a great religion, it contains a strain hostile to Western civilization, and recognize that a state of war exists between that particular strain of Islam and the West. This includes all Arab and/or Muslim countries whose governments nurture or tolerate such a hostile strain.
3. Face the fact that terrorism is the chosen tactic of Islamist militants who can't penetrate the defensive perimeters of Western powers from the outside. Face the fact that terrorism depends for its success on fifth columnists; face the fact that Western residents of Arab/Muslim background, along with Arab/Muslim visitors or students, are susceptible to Islamist recruitment as fifth columnists; and face the fact that the loyalty of such residents and visitors cannot be taken for granted. Consequently, much as it may offend liberal and multicultural sensibilities, face the fact that residents, visitors, and, when warranted, even citizens of such background may have to be subjected to profiling, restrictions, surveillance, isolation and, in some cases, expulsion.
4. Remember that up to, and including, the Second World War, military operations weren't conducted with the view that the enemy was merely "the regime" and not the population. The Allies acted on the assumption that the foe was the Germans and the Japanese, even though far from all Germans or Japanese supported the Nazis or the warmongers of Japan. When the Allies bombed Dresden, they didn't try to separate those who voted for Hitler in 1933 from those who voted against him. The imperiums of Wilhelm II or Franz Joseph before the First World War, though more liberal than modern dictatorships, were hardly Western-style democracies. They were absolute monarchies whose populations might not have endorsed their own rulers in a referendum. Yet it never occurred to the Entente to say that it was only fighting the Kaiser and not his subjects. During the Cold War, even though it was evident that most people inside the Soviet camp hated the regime -- they brought it down in the end -- the West prepared and relied on a nuclear deterrent that by its nature couldn't distinguish between the supporters and opponents of communism.
5. Americans will have to consider that making the avoidance of civilian casualities a rigid priority in war has two predictable consequences. First, there's reduced military effectiveness and increased exposure of one's own troops to danger. Second, a campaign may not be evaluated primarily in terms of its military/strategic achievement, but in how successful it was in avoiding collateral damage. This exposes a victorious campaign to the risk of being judged a political debacle if it falls short of some self-imposed goal of minimizing civilian casualties. In short, it increases the likelihood of winning the war and losing the peace. It's ironic when self-imposed Western standards carry such political burden against a terrorist enemy that, far from trying to avoid collateral damage, deliberately targets non-belligerents. Arab/Islamist military efforts specifically express themselves in the bombings (or suicide bombings) of civilian buses, planes, discos, or office buildings, along with ruses de guerre such as using civilian shields, dressing military units in civilian clothes, placing military targets in civilian quarters, etc. The indignation of Arab and Islamist belligerents -- who, after deliberately targeting civilians, protest when Western or Israeli action results in some collateral civilian damage -- ought not to persuade Americans that they have some moral duty to impose extra conditions on themselves in addition to standard conventions of war.
6. A year ago, I wrote that asking whether Iraqis will look at the coalition as liberators is asking the wrong question. It assumes a unanimity in Iraq we would never expect to find in our own countries. In America, most people share the same liberal-democratic heritage, yet even Americans are divided on the question of whether they're liberators or occupiers. In Iraq, there's at least a six-way division. First, there are those Iraqis for whom individual freedom, political democracy, and economic prosperity are important criteria. These people have predictably greeted the coalition forces as liberators. Next are those who define themselves mainly by their various sectarian or ethnic identities. Shiite or Kurdish Iraqis may, initially, have considered the forces that removed their Baathist-Sunni oppressors as liberators, but can hardly be relied on to do so forever, given that the coalition stands in the way of, say, Kurdish dreams of an independent Kurdistan or Shiite dreams of a Tehran-style theocracy. A third group identifies itself as Arab nationalists. Some may have hated Saddam, but like Westerners even less. Ditto for the fourth group, who defines itself primarily as Muslims. They're unlikely to cherish being liberated by the infidels, whatever they may have thought of Saddam. The fifth group is the "die-hards" currently burning and mutilating Americans in the streets of Falluja. They actually supported Saddam and benefited from his corrupt and despotic regime. These Iraqis naturally hate the coalition. Finally, there's a sixth group of Iraqis who care about little beyond their daily existence and their families. They understand next to nothing about democracy; they accepted Saddam and his predecessors without either affection or hostility, as one accepts the weather. These Iraqis may not be fanatical nationalists or Muslims, but they certainly regard Westerners as aliens. For them, the coalition appears as neither liberators nor oppressors, but as a force of nature, to be outwitted if possible and endured if necessary. Any estimate about the relative size of these groups would only be a guess, but the first group -- the supporters of democracy and Western values -- is probably the smallest, while the sixth group -- the apolitical Iraqis -- is probably the largest. It's their souls for which Islamists and pan-Arabists are contending with the West.
7. Relying on the possibility, or even probability, that most people within Islam -- or specifically within Iraq -- would prefer to live in a democracy, and that only a minority support despotism and enmity with the West, is a grievous error. It's not an error because it may not be true, but because it's immaterial. Majorities do not necessarily carry the day even in free countries, let alone in theocracies or tyrannies. Militant minorities are far more likely to set the tone in a given country, period, or civilization. Communism was rarely supported by more than 20% of the population in which it held sway. Even a relatively popular totalitarian system, Nazism, was supported only by one out of three voters in Germany's last free election before Hitler assumed power. Western policy-makers cannot take comfort in democracy's enemies having only a minority support among their own people. A minority support is all they need. It was all they needed even before the age of terror and weapons of mass destruction, and can do with even smaller numbers in the age of suicide bombers, anthrax and nuclear devices. It took just 19 Middle East infiltrators to create the havoc of 9/11 in Manhattan, and about the same for the recent mayhem of 3/11 in Madrid.
8. Terrorist despotism, theocratic or secular, must be confronted; it cannot be accommodated or appeased. Defeating the enemy is the best way to change his mind. Anti-civilizational ruthlessness, Marxist or Muslim, is to Western democracy what Hannibal's Carthage was to Rome. Some 2,000 years ago, Marcus Porcius Cato ended his speeches in the Senate with the words Carthaginem esse delendam -- Carthage must be destroyed. At his press conference this week, even if somewhat more diffidently, President Bush conveyed the same message.
Look Bunky, you would never have known that this article existed if I hadn't found and posted it, so quitcherbellyachin.
Don't start a war unless you're prepared to fight it with honor. Placing innocents in harms way is dishonorable and quite possibly, the first strike against your cause.
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