Posted on 03/05/2005 5:22:38 PM PST by CHARLITE
The War on Terrorism – more precisely the War on Moslem Terrorism – may have been won on March 1st, 2005. That was the day US intel folks announced they had intercepted messages from Osama Bin Laden to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, begging Zarqawi to launch terrorist attacks inside America itself.
The media went into a tizzy, bombarding Homeland Security officials with demands as to how they were going to protect us from this latest threat. And maybe there is a threat. Far more likely it’s an announcement of surrender.
Osama’s message was in Arabic. Let’s translate its real meaning into plain English:
“Dear Abu. I’m afraid I must announce to the world that, as a pitiful schmuck hiding in a mountain cave, I am powerless to organize or conduct any more terrorist attacks on the Great Satan of America. Can you do anything? I know you’re being hunted down in every mud-hole in Iraq right now, and it might be a little difficult for you to make your way undetected to the US, create your own terrorist network since mine obviously no longer functions, and start your own terrorist war there – but do your best, OK? I am depending on you, since our Islamofascist brothers can no longer depend on me. Yours, Osama.”
This is why Osama’s plea to Zarqawi should be a cause for celebration – as it proclaims his Al Qaeda no longer has the capacity to attack America any longer. (Albeit a quiet celebration. As the President said today, preventing such an attack remains his highest priority, as we cannot afford to take a chance and not prepare for the worst.)
Not quite a year ago, April 2004, I wrote The Fragility of Terrorism . I argued that the War on Moslem Terrorism could be over far sooner than anyone thought. The key excerpt:
A prediction we hear often regarding the War on Moslem Terrorism is that it is going to last a long, long time -- for so many years into the future that no one can see the end of it.
Maybe it will. Maybe it will be a war our grandchildren will be fighting when they’re our age. But no analysis of the war shows that it must be this way. It’s just a prediction, one which could turn out to be dramatically wrong. It’s entirely possible that the War on Moslem Terrorism could be won quickly.
When I began giving speeches in 1984 entitled “The Coming Collapse of the Soviet Union,” most people couldn’t even imagine a world in which the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Yet I went on to predict something even more unimaginable -- that the Soviet collapse wasn’t far off in the distant future, but that it was coming fast.
This was because, I argued, that the structure of the Soviet Empire, including the Soviet Union itself, was brittle. A brittle physical structure, like a glass, can be unchanging and unyielding -- but if the right stress is placed upon it, it doesn’t slowly give or crumble, it shatters. One minute it looks like it always has, the next moment it’s in pieces. Social structures can be brittle in the same way -- which is why the result of the stress placed upon it by the Reagan Doctrine was that the Soviet Union shattered virtually overnight.
The phenomenon of Moslem Terrorism is not a social structure -- it is a psychological structure; it is not located in any physical or geographical space, but in certain people’s minds. It is thus not a political or social or economic event, it is a mental event. If we want to get rid of it, we must understand and dissect it as such.
Moslem Terrorism is something which the 19th century British scholar Charles Mackay would have recognized as a “moral epidemic.” In 1841, he wrote a history of such epidemics entitled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. What all such mass delusions have in common is an incredibly intense psychological energy that is impervious to reason, reality, and morality.
That is the strength of these mass frenzies. Their weakness is that the energy, however intense, is inherently unstable -- in fact, the more intense, the more unstable. There is thus a fragility to them. They spring into a roaring existence, wreak their havoc, then vanish. They are ephemeral.
What feeds their energy is irrational hope, hope oblivious to danger and fact, hope that drives the absolute conviction that prices of tulips and South Sea islands and dotcom stocks will forever rise, that driving a plane into a building will cause the disintegration of the richest economy the world has ever known, that blowing yourself up to kill a few soldiers will defeat the most powerful military force in history…
The energy of fanatical radical Islam is unstable and fragile. It is the crux vulnerability. When the cost of tulip bulbs in 17th century Holland reached a point where there was no hope of finding more people willing to pay it, the tulip craze evaporated. When the cost of committing terrorism in Iraq and against America reaches a point where there is no or little hope of any gain thereby, the terrorist craze among Moslems will evaporate.
Osama’s plea to Zarqawi is a signal of hopelessness. It is part of the tectonic shift taking place throughout the Moslem world since the re-election of George W. Bush. The great hope of the terrorists was his defeat. Kerry would have postponed the elections in Iraq, giving hope to Zarqawi that he could win, and perhaps even started negotiating with Al Qaeda. Now, despite Zarqawi’s lashing out with suicide bombers blowing up Iraqis, the war in Iraq is “All But Won,” the title of TTP Guest Author Jack Kelly’s article this week.
Jack Kelly’s analogy with the Battle of Iwo Jima is apt. It took over a month to finish off the enemy, but the battle was tipped inevitably for the Marines when they took Mount Suribachi on the fifth day. There are going to be more bad days, more terrorist attacks in Iraq, we have to keep hunting down the Zarqawis and Osamas until we kill them, there will not be an unrestricted march towards the sunshine of Middle East peace and freedom with no storms along the way.
Yet whatever the storms, “freedom is on the march,” as President Bush has proclaimed, now in Iraq and Lebanon, tomorrow in Syria and Egypt, day after tomorrow in Iran, and ultimately in Saudi Arabia. Which means Osama Bin Laden is in retreat. He has lost and he knows it. The light of victory is shining at the end of the terrorist tunnel.
I'm not sure I agree with the author. The last time we got into a fight with militant Islam the battle lasted for centuries and many, many thousands of lives were lost. Islamic rulers and governments rose and fell, but Islam continued. It seems to have slept for awhile, a brief while as history accounts such things, but now it is awake again. Democracy has its charms, but I wonder if they are powerful enough to still the military drumbeat of jihad? The Arab mind is extremely emotional and unwilling to admit responsibility for Arab problems.
Also from Dr. Jack Wheeler's "tothepoint.com" site.
Excerpt
"Our most lethal weapon against the tyrants is freedom, and it is now spreading on the wings of democratic revolution. It would be tragic if we backed off now, when revolution is gathering momentum for a glorious victory. We must be unyielding in our demand that the peoples of the Middle East design their own polities, and elect their own leaders.
The first step, as it has been in both Afghanistan and Iraq, is a national referendum to choose the form of government. In Iran, the people should be asked if they want an Islamic republic. In Syria, if they want a Baathist state. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Libya, if they want more of the same.
We should not be deterred by the cynics who warn that freedom will make things worse, because the ignorant masses will opt for the fantasmagorical caliphate of the increasingly irrelevant Osama bin Laden. Mubarak and Qadaffi and Assad and Khamenei are arresting democrats, not Islamists, and the women of Saudi Arabia are not likely to demand to remain shrouded for the rest of their lives.
Faster, please. The self-proclaimed experts have been wrong for generations. This is a revolutionary moment. Go for it."
"...but if the right stress is placed upon it, it doesn’t slowly give or crumble, it shatters."
Ever break an "unbreakable" Corel dish? It shatters into about ten million little shards.
This is a good article, Bush has obviously rattled the cages, plus he has succeeded in taking the struggle "over there". I truly think history will judge him one of the greatest Presidents. The man can rise to the occaision, which oh so many cannot.
Not as long as its being tought and interpreted by Liberal @ssholes of today! All he'll be known for is the deaths of 1500 Marines in a war to find WMD and found nothing. Hell all thats written about Reagan is Iran/Contra. The real war today is not with Islamic facists, its with Liberal teachers and judges. We will win the war against terrorism and loose our country in the process!
But back then, there was no internet. It wasn't a "global village," as it is today. Warriors on horseback and foot soldiers were their methods, and the people whom they conquered and reconquered knew nothing of democracy or any concept of freedom & liberty even existing, let alone being the alternative to "Allah."
These are different times.
"These are different times."
At least for our side! Those other folks are still stuck in 1400, hopefully we can drag 'em into the 21st century. If not, at least we got the fire power on our side.
Right!! When was the last time that Bin Laden held a news conference from his formal press briefing room, or an elegant hall, declaring that he had George W. Bush "on the run" and that said Bush was last known to be hopping around from one cave to another in the Appalachain Mountains?
100% agreed. Wasn't it less than 4 years ago that we were hearing how Afghanistan was "an unconquerable rugged territory whose warriors were so hearty blah blah bah"
The US Military is the strongest in the history of the world. By a lot. To assume that we could not take on any three of the tinpot dictators in the middle east at once, and win handily, is to deny reality.
Sure, we would suffer some losses. War is never bloodless. But does anyone *really* feel that if we invaded Iran that the Iranian army would defeat us?
Rummy is right that the main war is ideological. If the West keeps crying "Surrender!" it does not matter how many times our military wins. We are ashamed of our Western Christian culture and do not want to have babies. They fill their mosques and have lots of children. We are losing that war.
God bless our military men and women. I know some who have gone over to Iraq. It is a tough post for young people.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0305/jkelly030405.php3
""When we look back on the 1980s now, it's not remembered as a decade in which a dim cowboy president courted global thermonuclear war, but as the decade when the USSR was brought down, the Warsaw Pact eliminated, and democratic governance came to Eastern Europe," said web logger Dale Franks. It has taken so long for "political restlessness" to "break through the ice" in the Middle East because presidents before George W. Bush took a liberal approach toward the despots of the region. The tyrants were too strong to be opposed; they must be appeased. "Stability" is more important than human rights for oppressed peoples.
While liberals clung to the peculiar notion that Arabs didn't mind being oppressed, so long as they were being oppressed by dictators who hate the United States, Bush believed Muslims want liberty and democracy as much as anyone else, and would embrace them if the tyrants' boots were removed from their necks. He then proceeded to remove those boots in Afghanistan and Iraq. And now the "Arab street" has spoken in a manner liberals never expected."
"We are ashamed of our Western Christian culture and do not want to have babies."
You are correct, that attitude has got to stop. Or we'll lose the war even if every single Jihadi vanishes overnight.
At the time, Islam was equal or superior to the West in most aspects of civilization and in military potential.
Today, Islam's only military assets are the wimpiness of Europe and America's unwillingness to exert its full strength.
That's no way to win any war.
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