Chalk Another One Up for the Good Guys
Since last week, the details of the recent plot to destroy planes and murder people over the Atlantic have dribbled out of the United Kingdom. While many questions remain, the leaders of the United States and Great Britain remind that we still fight a pitched battle with Islamic madmen. The plot has shocked many of the law abiding, but it really should not. We are fighting a war against people who see no value in law, secularism, and justice meted out from human judges. Their energy comes from the purely emotional: fear, anger, hate, revenge.
More astounding are the apologists, those concerned with the "fairness" of treatment for the terrorists, those who resent the term "Islamic fascists", those who criticize the US for failing to act as thoroughly as British gendarmes, those who laud the savvy of the terrorist enemy. While the crafty terrorists indeed have adapted, morphed into a lethal virus despite increased surveillance on all their activities, the victory for the Good Guys recently proves that the West can adapt quicker than they can. Will the terrorists exploit a weakness? Perhaps, and given that we live in an open society that allows individuals to worship and speak as they please, we will always permit the fear, anger, hate, and revenge that they preach. However, with each criminal act they dream up, there are millions of citizens who love the life of freedom. We win, hands down, in the clash of civilizations. They will never birth the caliphate on the shores of democracy.
Recently, I read an article by Richard Haass, a brilliant man with a superb diplomatic pedigree, that challenges the semantics of the "war on terrror." Part of his thesis contends that we need not think of this as war, replete with militaries, battles, uniforms, conventions, etc. Instead, we, as the targets of terror, need to accept its lethality as a part of quotidian life. "Terror" is not an enemy but a disease, and we can no more purge it from our lives as we can the threat of cancer. Better to prevent than defeat it.
Haass makes other salient points about the conflict: the uselessness of believing democracy means unequivocal peace in the Middle East, the need for enhanced police work, the imperative of denuding terrorism of its appeal. However, I challenge this assertion that we should abandon the metaphor of "war on terrorism" because, according to Haass, wars begin and end, and this one will not. If we examine the history of the 20th century, we find several instances when ideologies were defeated by arms and diplomacy. Nazism and its ugly step-sister, Communism, were defeated by short wars of combat and long wars of diplomacy, economic pressure, and covert activity. Imperial Japan was defeated and occupied and then produced a capitalist democracy that has become a legitimate economic world power. Likewise, Germany, divided and occupied, revealed what exactly was at stake: West Germany thrived while East Germany descended into the totalitarian nightmare that was the utopian promise of Mother Russia.
Terrorism acts on impulses sent from the Ideology Nerve Center, the Islamic fascism that shuns modernity and economic prosperity. We must wage this war in the same manner that we defeated the Soviets, with careful and patient economic pressure and a publicly spoken recognition that we are fighting a belief that threatens the way of life for millions of freedom loving people around the world. The shopkeepers of Bali hardly want Australian tourists to remain at home. And neither should we.
More astounding are the apologists, those concerned with the "fairness" of treatment for the terrorists, those who resent the term "Islamic fascists", those who criticize the US for failing to act as thoroughly as British gendarmes, those who laud the savvy of the terrorist enemy. While the crafty terrorists indeed have adapted, morphed into a lethal virus despite increased surveillance on all their activities, the victory for the Good Guys recently proves that the West can adapt quicker than they can. Will the terrorists exploit a weakness? Perhaps, and given that we live in an open society that allows individuals to worship and speak as they please, we will always permit the fear, anger, hate, and revenge that they preach. However, with each criminal act they dream up, there are millions of citizens who love the life of freedom. We win, hands down, in the clash of civilizations. They will never birth the caliphate on the shores of democracy.
Recently, I read an article by Richard Haass, a brilliant man with a superb diplomatic pedigree, that challenges the semantics of the "war on terrror." Part of his thesis contends that we need not think of this as war, replete with militaries, battles, uniforms, conventions, etc. Instead, we, as the targets of terror, need to accept its lethality as a part of quotidian life. "Terror" is not an enemy but a disease, and we can no more purge it from our lives as we can the threat of cancer. Better to prevent than defeat it.
Haass makes other salient points about the conflict: the uselessness of believing democracy means unequivocal peace in the Middle East, the need for enhanced police work, the imperative of denuding terrorism of its appeal. However, I challenge this assertion that we should abandon the metaphor of "war on terrorism" because, according to Haass, wars begin and end, and this one will not. If we examine the history of the 20th century, we find several instances when ideologies were defeated by arms and diplomacy. Nazism and its ugly step-sister, Communism, were defeated by short wars of combat and long wars of diplomacy, economic pressure, and covert activity. Imperial Japan was defeated and occupied and then produced a capitalist democracy that has become a legitimate economic world power. Likewise, Germany, divided and occupied, revealed what exactly was at stake: West Germany thrived while East Germany descended into the totalitarian nightmare that was the utopian promise of Mother Russia.
Terrorism acts on impulses sent from the Ideology Nerve Center, the Islamic fascism that shuns modernity and economic prosperity. We must wage this war in the same manner that we defeated the Soviets, with careful and patient economic pressure and a publicly spoken recognition that we are fighting a belief that threatens the way of life for millions of freedom loving people around the world. The shopkeepers of Bali hardly want Australian tourists to remain at home. And neither should we.
posted by Henry Plantagenet at 3:16 PM
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