The enemy is not simply the Taliban, Al-quada or any terrorist group , it is the ideology of Islam itself. Our attempts to fight against it have been band aid approaches that rely on propping up more secular regimes and trying to stabilize destabilized regions such as Afghanistan to avoid Islamic takeovers, all the while promoting some pipe dream of a moderate Islam in our own home countries. This is the same kind of Smart Power that got us into this mess in the first place. But how do you fight an ideology? When the USSR made a deal with Nazi Germany, they claimed that Isms could not be fought. And indeed Isms are not easy to fight. Nazi Germany could be defeated, but Nazism has survived. The Soviet Union fell, but Communism has not gone away. But unlike Islam, they have not become a major terrorist threat. There are a number of reasons for this. First, the fall of Nazi Germany and the USSR destroyed the ideal embodiments of Nazism and Communism. Neither ideology has ever really recovered from that, and the number of their adherents dropped sharply and have mostly channeled their energies into empty grandstanding or into working from inside the political system to seize power. Islam has not suffered a similar defeat for nearly a century. For the Shiites, the fall of Iran might serve a similar function. For the Sunnis, no standing country embodies those virtues. The Taliban came closest, and for as long as the Taliban continue to fight, the idea of an ongoing struggle persists. Like Communism and Nazism, Islamisms adherents have also moved into working from within the system, but only as a twin to an armed strategy. Secondly, Islam is to non-Muslim religions what Nazism and Communism was to Jews. The Jews had no place within an ideal Nazi or Communist state, the Nazi Final Solution depended on physical eradication, the Communist Final Solution on cultural eradication. Similarly non-Muslim religions have no place within an ideal Islamist state. This means that in majority non-Muslim countries, Muslims cannot plot political takeovers as Nazis and Communists can. They can work within the system, but only for so long since the endgame is to force everyone to live under Muslim law. And this cannot be done without a great deal of violence. Terrorism is a cheap way for a Muslim minority to try and enforce its will on a Muslim majority. It also allows for a game of Bad Muslim - Good Muslim, in which the Bad Muslims set off bombs on buses, while the Good Muslims work with the government to defuse extremism by teaching the authorities to slowly accommodate Muslim demands. Thirdly, while Communism and Nazism were urban industrial ideologies developed by Western intellectuals with the intention of creating industrialized superstates, Islam is pre-industrial and tribal. While the final Islamic goal may be a global Caliphate, the military tactics favor updated versions of nomadic raids, the key form of warfare by the Taliban, and internal infiltration in urban areas. When Nazism and Communisms superstates collapsed, the implementation of their ideology collapsed as well. Islam however is tribal and Islamism can be implemented in a handful of villages, as the Taliban demonstrated. Fourthly, Islam is religious, and political religion exists at a much deeper cultural level than any secular political ideology can. Where political ideologies need a political structure to control or plot control of, Islam can remain dormant with only Mosques and Korans to perpetuate itself, like insects hibernating in winter, before emerging in spring bent on conquest again. Religion is taught universally and functions as the fabric of a community, beyond question, and participation in which is the price of communal membership. Now lets look at what all these mean. The first, third and fourth conditions mean that Islam is far more decentralized, which in turn makes it much harder to suppress or destroy. The fourth condition means that as a religion it is deeply embedded, it is part of the structure of cultures and communities. The second condition means that Islam in non-Muslim countries must inevitably turn to violence as both a military and political tactic. What does all that tell us about winning the War on Terror? It means that Islam has to be fought not just on a military level, but on a political and cultural level. Deislamization has to be the guiding approach abroad, and especially at home. Islams cultural roots mean that it has to be resisted and uprooted at a cultural level. Bombing terrorist bases while leaving intact the Madrassas which educate and create a new generation of terrorists is a senseless waste of time that will accomplish nothing. Promoting Deislamization abroad, while throwing the Mosque gates open at home, only ushers in a new wave of terror at home. For the War on Terror to count for anything, it must be a War on Islam, because Islam is the guiding ideology behind terrorism. Rooting out terrorism without rooting out Islam, only painfully prolongs the struggle. A number of European countries have concluded exactly that, and decided that surrendering to Islam will spare them effort and pain. That is not a choice I can support, but it is at least a choice made based on an understanding of the problem. By contrast pretending that we can fight a War on Terror without fighting a War on Islam is simply wishful thinking. Fighting a War on Islam means making a careful study of the structures and ways in which Islam is sustained and promoted, particularly on higher education for Muslim religious scholars and on the ways in which the dilettante sons of wealthy Muslim families become entangled in such projects. The Muslim religious school trains the terrorists of tomorrow and imbues them with dreams of creating a new Islamic reality. The boys and men who study in them and then go on to higher learning as Imams and Mullahs, form the core of Islamic terrorist ideology. The Mosque serves as the base for any Muslim community, particularly abroad where the Muslim preacher can incite violence. The Koran serves as the manual for terrorism in the name of an ideal Islamic world order. In order of importance, these are the real commanders and bases of the enemy. To the extent that they are pushed back, weakened, uprooted or destroyed-- we will have peace. To the extent that they prosper and spread, we will have nothing but war. The Future of the War on Terror is a War on Islam, because Islam has declared war on us. The debates over tactics in Afghanistan ignore the large reality that the Taliban are not an isolated phenomenon, they are what expanding Islam will always produce. While we chop away at the branches, the seeds of terror grow in our own soil waiting to sprout. The War against Islam will have to be fought more on a cultural and political level, than on a military level, because that is where the roots dig deep into the rotten soil. That will require a whole other kind of global alliance, an alliance of cultures and religions threatened by Islam, around the world. It will require cooperation between Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and many others as well. It will involve distributing the truth about Islam, countering Islams political gains with strong anti-Muslim activist coalitions and shutting Islamic organizations out of the political process and away from their attempts at mainstreaming Islam. Much of this is already underway today. But far beyond that it will require deporting Imams who preach anything but good citizenship, shuttering mosques and madrassas and halting and even reversing Islamic immigration. On a military level, we will have to make it clear that any Muslim terrorist attack will result in utter devastation for the source countries involved. Muslim terrorists can kill thousands, but we can kill a thousand times that. And the sooner we make it clear that will respond with ruthless force, the less likely it is that we will face a situation where we have to. Nation building may have a role where the conditions are favorable to the rise and rule of secular authorities, but if we have the courage, deterrence through destruction is a better use of our resources, than deterrence through backing puppet regimes that could not survive without our troops to protect them. We know who the enemy is. It is not simply the terrorists lurking at their base camps, it is the cleric in Al Azhar University who signs off on a Fatwa that legitimizes murdering our people. That cleric is a much better target than the terrorists, because the cleric provides the ideology that creates Islamic terrorism in the first place. If we are to use Smart Strikes, than let us be really smart about it by making sure that we do not waste time striking at a tentacle of the octopus, when we can strike at the head instead. The War on Terror will not end by entering a bunker and finding the Leader of Terrorism dead. Islamic terrorism has no leader, it has motivation. Breaking Islam of its enthusiasm for power and expansionism is the only way we will win. Victory is possible. The only question is do we want it badly enough.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 21:22:26 +0000
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