Hi KLP; The article is well written, but its logic is faulty.
(1) We're not in a war with terrorism. A more accurate description would be a police action. "Vietnam" was a war.
(2) We're not in a war with militant Islamism. If we were, we'd be off fighting in Sudan or Nigeria, or making motions at Qaddaffi, who the author lists as a big time terrorist, or Iran, the nation that put out a prize for killing Rushdie.
(3) Because the author chooses to cast the conflict in terms of "war" rather than "conflict", it leaves him unable to contemplate alternatives to military conflict. The problem with the military alternatives are that they create more Islamic Terrorism, not less. He even admits this in the case of Israel: "Militant Islam also gained momentum after the devastating Arab loss to Israel in the Six-Day War of June 1967."
(4) The underlying intent is to justify a militant America. He writes "Encouraged by an ambivalent America, a rash of militant Islamist violence followed", but he is unable to explain how Israel, which has never been at all ambivalent, has nevertheless "encouraged Islamist violence" to a pitch far higher than the US has experienced.
Re: "After that, America faces hard decisions. In this new and long-overdue war against the forces of terror, the path ahead is daunting. Militant Islam has strongholds in Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan, to name just a few countries. The challenge now will be finding ways to destroy the radical infrastructure and arrest or kill militants while simultaneously bolstering the influence of moderate Muslims. How to accomplish this task is unclear."
The primary tool needed to defeat militant Islamism is time and patience. Our ignoring Iran for 10 years because of our fears of Iraq have caused the Iranian regime to moderate slightly, and more importantly, the younger generation in Iran to practically revolt.
The areas where the Israelis have used military force to attempt to control the civilian population have only grown more restive. If we use military force the same problem will come to us, but we're a much juicier target.
If we stand around and sanctimoniously tell the Moslems how to live their lives they will resist that as much as we would resist the same bullshit from them.
The solution is to mostly to leave them alone, and to generate good will by good deeds when this is possible. That the author sees no solution is caused by his blindness to this tactic.
Fortunately, the Bush administration has figured out the importance of "winning hearts and minds", and is making a full court press on this in Afghanistan.
Imagine that you're the president. You have two advisers. One says that we have to win their hearts and minds with assistance, while simultaneously punishing criminals when found. The other side says "How to accomplish this task is unclear", but the implication of their logic is that we will have to conquer, occupy and garrison the Moslem world from the Atlantic through Africa and Asia to the Pacific, including the nations of "Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan, to name just a few countries." Furthermore, the only example of a country that has attempted this lame policy on a limited scale is Israel -- which has a terror problem far worse than any we can imagine. Hard decision? I don't think so. The fight in the Administration ended with the accidental attack on the wedding party this past summer in Afghanistan. That tragic fiasco made it clear that unleashed blunt military force against civilians would create more new enemies than kill (or even frighten) old ones. The only reason why the war party was kept going in the press after that was for electoral advantage against the Democrats.
-- Carl |
