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Symposium: The Terror War: How We Can Win
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 15, 2004
The Bush administration has now entered its second term in office. What strategies must it now renew -- or pursue -- to sow the seeds for victory in the War on Terror? Frontpage Symposium has assembled a distnguished all-star panel to discuss this question. Our guests today are:
Walter Laqueur, the former director of the Institute of Contemporary History in London. He is the author of some of the basic texts on terrorism, most recently Voices of Terror (Reed Publishing, 2004);
Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service, whose book Red Horizons was republished in 24 countries. He is still sentenced to death in Romania;
Robert Leiken, the director of the Immigration and National Security Program at the Nixon Center and the author of Bearers of Global Jihad? Immigration and National Security after 9/11;
and
Ralph Peters, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and the author, most recently, of “Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace.”
FP: Gentlemen, welcome to Frontpage Symposium. It is an honor to be in the presence of such distinguished scholars and gentlemen.
We’re going to get to Bush’s election victory and what it means for the terror war, but first, let’s see if we are on the same page in terms of our definitions and assumptions on our Islamist enemy.
Let me give it a shot to stimulate the discussion:
The West is at war with Islamism, a modern day totalitarian ideology that is a close cousin of fascism and communism. Based on the worship of totality, Islamism, like its two 20th century despotic counterparts, yearns for mass death and suicide for no particular rational reason --although, yes, in part, it finds a surface inspiration in its Islamic component that promises other-worldly rewards for jihad, etc.
Islamism ferociously despises individual freedom and democracy -- because liberty poses a deadly threat to its own existence. It must, therefore, annihilate human freedom wherever it sees it. This explains why militant Islam must wage war on the two nations which most powerfully symbolize, buffer and protect human liberty: the United States and Israel.
Is this a solid start for our discussion? Or have I misdirected us?
Ralph Peters, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and the author, most recently, of “Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace.”
FP: Gentlemen, welcome to Frontpage Symposium. It is an honor to be in the presence of such distinguished scholars and gentlemen.
We’re going to get to Bush’s election victory and what it means for the terror war, but first, let’s see if we are on the same page in terms of our definitions and assumptions on our Islamist enemy.
Let me give it a shot to stimulate the discussion:
The West is at war with Islamism, a modern day totalitarian ideology that is a close cousin of fascism and communism. Based on the worship of totality, Islamism, like its two 20th century despotic counterparts, yearns for mass death and suicide for no particular rational reason --although, yes, in part, it finds a surface inspiration in its Islamic component that promises other-worldly rewards for jihad, etc.
Islamism ferociously despises individual freedom and democracy -- because liberty poses a deadly threat to its own existence. It must, therefore, annihilate human freedom wherever it sees it. This explains why militant Islam must wage war on the two nations which most powerfully symbolize, buffer and protect human liberty: the United States and Israel.
Is this a solid start for our discussion? Or have I misdirected us? |
