We're winning the wrong war
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To say that much has been written about the Global War on Terror would be to make something of an understatement. A lot of what has been written -- that we're losing the war, that our prosecution of it is what causes it to continue, and that Iraq is not part of it -- has been balderdash driven by political agendai.
But we miss the mark also in thinking that we are winning, that our prosecution of it vectors us directly toward victory, and that our best place to be is Iraq. It's true that we are slowly winning the Global War on Terror. It's true that winning in Iraq will aid us in winning the GWOT. And it's true that we need to finish the job in Iraq. But none of those things matter.
We shouldn't be fighting terror. We should be fighting against jihad.
John F. Lehman piece in WaPo Friday (h/t Eric at Classical Values) starts:
Are we winning the war? The first question to ask is, what war? The Bush administration continues to muddle a national understanding of the conflict we are in by calling it the "war on terror." This political correctness presumably seeks to avoid hurting the feelings of the Saudis and other Muslims, but it comes at high cost. This not a war against terror any more than World War II was a war against kamikazes.
We are at war with jihadists motivated by a violent ideology based on an extremist interpretation of the Islamic faith. This enemy is decentralized and geographically dispersed around the world. Its organizations range from a fully functioning state such as Iran to small groups of individuals in American cities.
We have been so conditioned to react negatively to singling out any religion that when a religion has as its goal the assimilation and dessication of our civilization, we cannot accept that reality. We think we must be reacting out of some kind of racist or parochial mindset that we haven't yet rooted out of our thinking. It must be our thinking that is wrong. People are like us; they just want the things we want.
But reality has a way of intruding on our desires. On 9/11/2001 we learned that the "isolated" attacks by Muslim groups against US and non-Muslim targets were part of a pattern, a worldwide struggle of one religion against all the others and for political, religious, cultural, and social control of the entire world. Terrorism is merely their current weapon of choice.
We fight terrorism because terrorism happened on 9/11, but what caused the terrorism? Jihad.
Will we defeat our foes by fighting terrorism? No. Terrorism is their weapon of choice because they lack a military machine large enough to defeat us on our terms. Denied terrorism somehow, they would find other methods, such as the use of conventional military, oil-funded propaganda, or state-supported nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction to achieve their goal of worldwide domination. Even if we convince them somehow that terrorism is not going to work, they will find other weapons to continue their "struggle". It's in their book.
Terrorism will always be with us. As long as there are people who hate other people, which is to say, as long as there are people, there will be those who will use violence against civilians to achieve political ends. We can't defeat terrorism even by conquering the whole world, a strategy from which we would recoil.
In order to defeat even Islamic terrorism, we have to defeat the very idea of jihad. I don't know how to do that without wiping out every Muslim, a tactic from which we recoil with even greater horror.
But I do know that pretending jihad isn't a problem won't make it go away.
>>Why should FARC, IRA, the Tamil Tigers, and other terrorists get a pass on our international anti-terror efforts?
You might address that question to Rep. Pete King, the most aggressively pro-terrorist politician in Congress. I find it difficult to take the House Committee on Homeland Security remotely seriously while he remains its Chairman - or a member of it at all.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
Are the threat to the US, not terrorism in general. We aren't actually fighting terror so much as we are fighting the jihadists. The fact that we simply call it a "war on terror" has a lot more to do with political correctness than accuracy.
Not only will terrorism never be wiped out, you run into problems when good causes fall into that category. If dissidents in Iran militarized and started to attack infrastucture and military targets, would we have to be opposed to them? They could reasonably be called terrorists by the government of Iran.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
"We invade their countries, kil their leaders, and convert them to Christianity' ;) I'm sorry I had to-any chance I get to quote Coulter I do it.
"When possible we are bringing terrorists to justice. And when necessary, we are bringing justice to the terrorists."-Secretary Rice
I wrote on the Lehman op ed here and I think his prescription muddies rather than clarifies the issue.
as I am sure you understand, and at the same time we "outside" the religion" can in no way change its tenets.
I do agree, however, that since terrorism has been a method of [fill in the blank] resistance, insurgency, reprisal to tyranny, conquest, etc...we will never "defeat" terrorism as a tool of violence/war.
Our war...our current generation anyway, is fighting the campaign of taking out those we know are organizing and executing it, and I think we can kill most of them-the heaviest hitters anyway. Future generations (our kids and their kids) are going to be left with fighting the things that lay open one's need to use terrorism to get their message communicated.
I hate to say this, but we really are going to need to build a world where people don't live in an environment that leads them to use this method of communication. History will decide whether the Bush doctrine of invoking democracy everywhere in the world was the solution to fixing the misery of the lives of those fighting and dying this way. I, personally, am still convinced it's a reasonable idea. A world ruled by the people living in it, and not by the few who would tyrannize and repress us, HAS to be better than the way people live today in those countries where today's terrorists are being born and bred.
Whatever it is, the "victory" in the war on terror will be that everyone in the world is happy enough with themselves and their surroundings to use peaceful and humane strategies for working towards change and the overall impovement of their human condition, rather than the strategies they use today. And as a postscript, it will come through the children of today's terrorists (or would be terrorists) that have not yet been born.
Proud to be: politically incorrect, straight, white, pro-life Christian, and of the opinion the spotted owl tastes just like chicken.
"We shouldn't be fighting terror. We should be fighting against jihad."
Disagree. Even if we assume the definition of jihad that I think you mean, the brutally violent kind, I still disagree.
Why should FARC, IRA, the Tamil Tigers, and other terrorists get a pass on our international anti-terror efforts?
We can't eradicate terrorism any more than we can eradicate war. That doesn't mean killing those people who attempt it, and stopping those who support those who attempt it, shouldn't be a high priority.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.