There are no excuses for it and there is no defense for it. That ideology can be clearly defined and identified: Radical Islamism. The ideologies of Radical Islamism is very clear. The goal is to destroy, punish and subjugate non believers. The real enemy are free peoples. Freedom is antithetical to terrorism because freedom usurps the power of the terrorist. With out the power to instill fear and punishment, the terrorist is nothing. What is the icon of freedom? The US, of course. Our freedoms, success and ever growing potential are what the terrorist must destroy.Read the whole thing--both of them.
Terror has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with ideologies. It is true that the terrorists will use the terms 'economic disadvantages' as part of their justification for their outrage, but that is all for show. If they really cared about the economically disadvantaged, they would build businesses and fund opportunities. They would not build bombs and fund terror. Much of the western world cannot see beyond a shrewdly crafted display of 'victim hood' that defies logic. When suicide bombers homes are destroyed, for example, there are groups, American and European, that fall over each other, in the noble effort to rebuild those homes. There are no efforts to rebuild the busses or the lives shattered by the terrorist that blew up those busses to begin with. Is any wonder that recent fatwas decrying terror against civilians specifically exclude Israelis? They Islamists have every reason to believe that the West will not stand up for Israeli terror victims.
Hostages are not taken and held, to be traded for economic aid. Planes aren't flown into buildings in response to GDP of the free markets of the western world versus the GDP of the many tyrannies of the Muslim world. In fact, the terrorists aims are deliberately misrepresented by the much of the left. The terrorists don't want to see western values and successes brought into the Muslim world. Indeed, that is what they are fighting against. Religious freedoms, abortion rights, gay rights and human rights are anathema to Radical Islamist ideologies. That ideology demands the murder of those whose behavior they find offensive--usually administred in a cruel and brutal fashion. These are truths many on the left somehow manage to forget.
In the end, we need to defeat terror by blowing up the terrorists. Brute, raw, force--the equal and opposite reaction of the terrorists own behavior. Of course, that force needs to be directed- but make no mistake, only force will eliminate the problem.
Friday, August 12, 2005
GWOT Dissected
Sigmund, Carl & Alfred posted two excellent pieces about the GWOT. Below are excerpts from both, their order slightly re-arranged from the originals:
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6 comments:
"blowing up" is a handy, if inexact science. You have to find the particular perpetrators usually, something that is proving quite difficult.
... and I seriously have to ask, what if it is something that is rising up from within the general beliefs of Muslims? what would you propose the "blowing up" means then? I'm with you in thinking that something ought to be done, but I think this is choosing the easy and undo-able suggestion here.
Changing the thinking is the slower, but more practical solution, but it doesn't make for as stirring a tale....
The point in the piece was to hold those that fund and support terror, accountable.
When behavior becomes expensive, it tends to stop.
I really don't think we can say that time is a luxury. It is a commodity and you have to decide how it will be used. I am taking the long view on it and saying that -for our desired outcomes- we will need to do things the slow, but more sure way. I would have more than one good reason for this track.
What to do in the meantime? One thing is to have a cohesive plan on the defensive. That means we need to do something about the borders.
We are using force, now. Our policymakers need to carefully assess how we use our military. I think they are in the process of that.
As for the funding. pshaw.
I read through, and while the phrase "making things expensive" is there, it is in form of retribution that all the rhetoric is loaded. "As we said, dropping bombs and not leaflets"
I find it contrary to see that ideology is pinpointed as the problem, but force through physical destruction the only real alternative that is suggested. This says two things to me:
1-that there is an idea that you can iradicate ideas by bringing people under the boot. Ideology is not fought with bombs.
2-that there is some vagueness in the understanding of who and what we are talking about.
Again, are we talking about adherents of Islam, if the problem arises from the teachings? Or are we talking about an underground and fluid group of extremists? Or are we talking about something else? Are we imagining that this is a group that is identifiable as belonging to a specific territory and structure ( like the Nazi's mentioned)?
That last one is a grave mistake to make I believe, and the others call for a mainly ideological aimed sort of warfare with a very carefully aimed sort of physical warfare.
Changing the thinking is the object of the GWOT. And to that end, there are three parts to the strategy. First, negotiation and persuasion. Second, securing the homelands, including the West's borders. And, third, force.
Ilona insists "Ideology is not fought with bombs," especially when our ideological enemies are scattered and fluid. But bombs do alter even dispersed evil. The few remaining Nazis no longer are a threat, and the last militant Japanese Shinto-ist committed seppuku in November 1970--and he was best known for novels and short stories. More relevantly, the Soviets were felled by bombs and ideology in judicious proportion.
It is true that our challenge may be greater than that accepted and met by both the "greatest generation" and cold warriors. But the only question is whether the West, like Mishima, settles on suicide. For if we fight as if our civilization and lives are at stake -- and they are -- we surely shall win.
Carl, I truly admire your confidence. I have conflicting opinions on this, mainly because I feel that the warfare is different than most of that which we have seen in modern times, to wit: it is religious in nature. I am willing to think that I could be very wrong, or perhaps only half right in this.
We are using force, so we shall see how this works out.I will say that you do an excellent job on the information side of the warfare... the more good solid information, the better we can work towards being unified in purpose. And keeping the purpose on the high ground of what is good for all.
The Soviets? Bombs? You mean held in check by the nuclear balance?
I would say more that they crumbled from the inside out... and that is an ideological deficiency.
Ilona, the bombs to which I was referring were dropped in the hot spots of the Cold War--Korea, Vietnam, Congo, etc.--and reflecting on the force we wrongly declined to use--in Hungary and Czechloslovokia.
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