Don't fight the last war

In 2001, Arlis on FreeRepublic posted an article "Don't fight the last war" by Barry Rubin from the Jerusalem Post dated 28 Sep 2001. This is currently the only source for the article that I can find, and it's worth reviewing.

Hillary Clinton in debate last year said that "We are not at war with Islam" but with radical terrorism. Unfortunately for her and for us, Islam is at war with us, and has been for 1400 years, with many pauses and hiatuses for regrouping, reconsidering, and re-arming. In the current nominating convention acclaiming her candidacy for President, there has been no program to address the looming problem of jihad, and no mention of Islam as an existential threat.

Indeed, our current administration continues to dither about a response to each individual jihadist attack on a Western outpost. POLICY is supposed to be a plan for dealing with a systemic threat, to obviate the humiliating fluttering that we go through with each new unsurprising event.

So... POLICY:
Some over-arching policy considerations might be:
1. Do not interfere with Muslims who are fighting Muslims. This is a corollary to Napoleon's "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." A laudable exception was made by Reagan when he aided both Iran and Iraq in the 80s, keeping them more evenly matched.

2. Recognize that not all Muslims are dangerous, only the devout. The Qur'an mandates jihad in 132 surahs, and the Meccan surahs of tolerance are definitively reversed by the later Medinan surahs. The theological term is abrogated. Those who include clear implications as well as flat statements raise the number to 164. And that specifically referes to the lesser jihad, commanding death or submission for infidels, not the greater jihad (al-akhbar) that commands self-perfection along the line of Ben Franklin's program. Recognize too that the children of the non-devout may become devout.

3. Recognize that one can deal with secular tyrants (Assad, Putin) on a catch as catch can basis for mutual benefit, unlike the devout whose only responsibility is to Allah's commands. We should refuse to depose secular tyrants like the Shah of Iran, Qadaffi, Mubarak, and Assad. We should not have supported Mohamed Morsi, Erdogan, and other Muslim Brotherhood types (Al-Jazeera complained that Obama's support for them was tepid.) Having gotten rid of Saddam and his sons, we should not have banned all Baathists from the new government and the military, having learned from the unsatisfactory result of attempted denazification after WWII. We should rejoice that Egypt's el-Sisi is not only secular but reasonable and stop threatening to withhold aid. Military rule is much preferable to islamic rule.

4. Recognize that ISIS and the "moderate" rebels in Syria have a common aim - to depose Assad. And to that end they will cooperate, and have done so. The rebels we have armed at a cost of a half-billion or so dollars crossed into Syria from Turkey and gave over their equipment to al-Nusra. The definition of a MODERATE MUSLIM might be that he does not wish to follow all of Allah's commands. But he might not want that to get around. On the other hand, purporting to be moderate while making fools of the Americans might be very cool indeed. One test for people boarding airplanes, or applying to the armed forces or the police, might be requiring them to step on a Koran.

5. Note that the Muslim collective, the umma, has a long memory and great patience, and that we on the other hand have a short attention span and a limited attention to detail. Islam is assured of eventual victory by the words of Allah and they are not confounded by setbacks. They have been reassured many times by successes over the past few decades, most impressively perhaps by the destruction of the returning shuttle Columbia carrying the Israeli astronaut -- clearly the work of God.

6. Recognize that we are involved in a religious war. Most of us Americans don't have any idea what a religious war means. Unlike Muslims, we tend to take God's commandments as strong suggestions. We expect to be punished in the next life, not in this one. We admit that not every sin need be a crime. We have little conception of what it means to be labelled an "enemy of God" and hunted down.

7. Consider asking the State Department to issue the following statement: "The government of the United States denies that, in the event of a major Islamic attack, it has nuclear missiles targeted on Mecca, Medina, Qadian, and Qom. Rumors to that effect are without foundation. No questions, sorry."

8. Charles Krauthammer has noted that in the Gulf War we saved Kuwaiti Muslims, that in the Balkans we saved Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims, and that we tried to save the largely Muslim population of Somalia from starvation. And for this we got the carefully planned slaughter of nearly 7,000 people. Infidels get no credit for aid to Muslims, since it is Allah's doing, not theirs. Clearly this is not a matter of political interest and maneuver, but of intransigent ideology and bloodlust. And until the Muslim community separates itself from these hyenas, they stand condemned to the same sword. If these indeed are Allah's warriors, then Allah is Satanic and needs to be shamed, humiliated, abased and befouled. If they are not Allah's, they need to be disavowed so that Allah may be cleansed of them. But after Sept. 11, where were the Muslim theologians and clergy, the imams and mullahs, rising around the world to declare that Sept. 11 was a crime against Islam? Where were the fatwas against Osama bin Laden? Was that, or any of the other jihadi murders and massacres of innocents, declared haram? The voices of high religious authority have been scandalously still.

The destruction of Mecca, Medina and other holy cities should not be assumed to be an idle threat. And that probably would destroy Islam as a world player, no matter who was left alive, no matter now many. It would certainly destroy faith in support from an omnipotent deity. It might indeed be a humanitarian move, saving many lives, theirs and ours. Later, we could build recreational complexes on the slag and quartz of the previously holy sites, thus assuring excitement for our jaded materialistic citizens, and targets for the faithful muslims who remain active, these diversions assuring that New York will never be struck as long as they remain standing. The defense of these cities - Islam 'R' Us, McIslam, Islam Lite - will provide useful exercise for our military and police academies and our technical institutes (which will, of course, no longer admit anyone of the Muslim faith or Arab origin.) Tracking the sorties back to their countries of origin may prove entertaining, too.

Now, who will give aid and comfort to the enemy? Is there in fact any reason to be rational, understanding, and tolerant? Let them know that there is some fraction of our effete and decadent society that is eager to feed their intestines to swine. And suggest that they may be straining at the leash.

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -- H.L. Mencken

Our secular religion is an agnostic rebranding of the old Puritan “City on a Hill” vision. We’re destined to bring democracy to peoples who are stuck in a 10th century rejection of Hellenistic rationality—they will accuse Christians of blasphemy for irreverence toward printed material they themselves can’t read which “might” be religious. We are on a 19th century, neo-colonialist “crusade” to overthrow the tyrants who comprise the lowest common denominator of civil order—Saddam lives in the secret cadre of Baathist officers who give the orders to Isis “Sheikh” frontmen. The first order of business in conducting idea warfare with the social media wizards who recruit hydra-headed legions, before understanding your enemy’s thought, is to have a thought yourself. Without rediscovering the core of freedom loving, 18th century revolutionary political thought which was the wonder of its time, multiculturalism renders former Western leftist intellectual heads, vacuum chambers, the sound of Allahu Anbar being the giant sucking sound as a force with only rudimentary intellectual pressure inexorably rushes in to fill the unnatural vacuum.

Jim,
Thank you for registering on FR today to bump the 2001 article and write your own thoughts on US policy re: Islamic Jihad. Both were worth reading and worth saving.

I hope our future President will read them. You said it well, that it is insane to be politically correct when civilization is being euthanized by technobarbarians.

The Westerner

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