We will defeat Islamism, the same way we defeated Communism:
From 1919 through 1991, the U.S. led the struggle against Communism. This long war eventually was concluded, in a total victory for the U.S. Today, there are only a few tiny remnants of Communism left, and they serve mainly as cautionary tales. The Chinese are Communist in name only.
How was this victory achieved? Here is the paradox: Communism won all the important military battles, but in the end was vanquished.
Over and over, for 72 years, those who opposed Communism sent large armies to defeat them. And, over and over, the Communists cloaked themselves in the mantle of nationalism, and held the ground at the end of the war. The first example of this, was when the US, UK, and France sent armies into Russia in 1919, to try and defeat the Bolsheviks. This failed.
The next attempt to destroy Communism militarily was 1941-1945. Stalin, in the 1930s, had (in a paranoid rage) killed off much of his own officer corps. He had discredited communism among the peasantry (still the majority of the population), with his disastrous and bloody collectivization of agriculture. It should have been possible to co-opt most of the population of the Soviet Union, and turn them against Stalin. But nationalism trumps all else (and the Germans were terrible at co-opting other nationalities), so Stalin won his Great Patriotic War. The anti-Communist armies failed again, and the Communist armies conquered huge new areas.
The U.S. poured vast amounts of money and weapons into the Nationalist Chinese cause, but they too lost, and another large territory went Communist. We had a few minor victories in Greece, Malaysia, Philippines. A stalemate in Korea. Then another huge defeat, in IndoChina. In N. Vietnam 1945-1954, and in S. Vietnam 1960-1975, once again the Communists championed nationalism, and beat large foreign armies equipped with all the latest technology.
The U.S. has been trying for over 40 years, to destabilize Cuba, in an endless low-intensity war. Over the course of this war, we have used every terrorist technique the CIA could dream up. This method has been a total failure. Our attacks on Cuba have legitimized Castro, as the champion of Cuban nationalism.
The only time we managed to roll back Communism from a territory they had conquered, defeating them militarily, was in Afghanistan. This is the exception that proves the rule. We won here, because this time it was the Communists who were the foreign invading army. We, not they, championed the nationalist cause, so the Communists lost.
To sum up the history of 1919-1991: Attempts to militarily defeat Communism failed, led to the expansion of areas under Communist control, and actually delayed the eventual victory. They were consistently counter-productive. The only (partially) successful use of our armies in the Cold War, was in defense. Offense failed every time.
So, how did we manage to eventually win, in spite of this string of military defeats?
Simple: We provided a good example.
We created societies with much more wealth and freedom than what the Communists could achieve. That's all we had to do, to achieve total victory. Communism was destroyed from within, by reform and non-violent protest, because the capitalist democracies provided a better example than Stalin and Mao. Our good example convinced the Chinese Communist Party to voluntarily abandon communism. Our good example convinced the E. German and Soviet armies to disobey orders to fire on the pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989-1991.
This is how we are going to defeat Islamism, as well. And, as with Communism, every aggressive offensive military attack on a Muslim nation will probably provoke a nationalist response, and fail, and the net result will be to delay our eventual victory.
The winning strategy is:
1. provide a good example
2. a purely defensive military posture
3. don't get on the wrong side of nationalist wars
4. a global Marshall Plan and HeartsAndMinds campaign.
By the time our armies leave Iraq in defeat in 2004 or 2005, we will have pissed away over $200B there, and wasted the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of brave young American soldiers. The result: another nation where we are passionately hated. Unfortunately, disastrous methods like this, are going to lead to a string of defeats, until we adopt the winning strategy. The War Party, the people who believe the U.S. Army is a Universal Tool that can do anything, fix any problem, they are delaying victory and making it more costly. |
