World War III (I Never Thought I'd Quote Newt Gingrich on Anything)

Concerned Citizen: This is Part 1 in a series that will explore some recent events and our war with Islamic Fascism. Future installments will discuss how I believe we should specifically prosecute this war.

The Judeo Christian West hasn't won many battles in World War III (as Newt Gingrich terms it), but the Brits just chalked one up with their uncovering of the airline plot, that would have led to four to seven thousand deaths (or more) of innocent men, women and children.

While there is much for which President Bush deserves to be criticized, he has been right on the big themes, despite constant criticism from the Left, the Democratic Party and, of course, the hapless Europeans. He was right about:

-- the Axis of Evil (does anyone by now doubt that Iran, North Korea and Syria are bad people?),
-- the fact that when dealing with the regimes of Islamic countries, they are either "with us or against us" in this war,
--the best defense is a good offense -- the concept of pre-emptive war, and
--only total victory in this war is acceptable.

While the Bush administration has gotten a D to F grade on execution of this war and, perhaps more importantly, on leadership, communication and salesmanship to the world of the necessity of this war (where is Winston Churchill when we need him?!?), he has been right on the fundamentals. It is wonderful for well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) liberals to apply concepts of Western rationalism to the Islamic world and say "if only we could improve the lives of their young to show them a future, the fuel for this Islamic evolution would be deprived", or "we have to give Islamic moderates a chance to combat these ills in their own culture, and to do so we must make the following concessions to give them ammunition to show that we are people of good will, not hell bent on humiliating the Islamic (particularly the Arab) world"(while honor is an important and often illogical driver of behavior in all cultures, what type of sane civilization lets the concept of "humiliation" at any disagreement take on the unchallenged power that it possesses in Arab culture?). And to some extent, these views make some logical sense. For instance, while it is abundantly clear from their public declarations that the Palestinian situation is nowhere near the top of Iran's, Hezbollah's or Al Qaeda's list in their war against the Judeo-Christian world, some sort of mutually acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian mess would seem to Western-trained minds to be a salve to Arab "humiliation" at Western/Jewish Israel colonialism (or Israel "bibleism" (my term), which is more dangerous to Islamic ideology), and provide fuel to Arab moderates seeking to focus on inward-looking reforms in the Arab world. However, in reality this idea of compromise doesn't appear to work, other than if it accomplishes a total capitulation of Israel's right to exist (a position, by the way, that is at least informally propounded by the worst appeasers of Europe). Everytime that a concession has been offerred or made by the Israelis, it has been taken by the Arabs --starting with the radicals but quickly taken across the politicial spectrum -- as an act of "weakness" by Israel rather than of bravery and good intention, and Islamic radicalism is simply emboldened. Moderate Arabs are too weak or afraid to assert leadership in their own worlds and educate their people to understand that getting half the pie is better than none of it, or to negotiate for anything other total victory (i.e., the end to Israel), even if camoflaged by an incremental approach. Hence the moderates are not positioned to take credit for negotiating the Israeli concession which Israel seeks in its self interest, which results in the extremists being able to justifiably argue that they forced the concession as a retreat of the enemy Zionist forces, emboldening the Arab street to drive forward to total victory.

Similarly, we could (and probably should) remove our forces from Iraq tomorrow, and remove another Western irritant to the Arab psyche that is being so well manipulated by Al Qaeda and Shiite Iran today in the Islamic world. But again, if not negotiated by a moderate Iraqi governing body (which needs our troops there for its survival, after all), this withdrawal would be portrayed as a radical-empowering defeat of the West, and would embolden greater battles in the war against Judeo-Christian civilization. A Pan-Arab government conference led by relatively moderate Arab states appealing for our departure would be good too, but for similar reasons, I think they would be petrified for their own survival to give the extremists this result (perhaps all the talk of humiliation in the Arab world has a lot to do with an underlying inadequacy or insecurity in their manlihood?). This does not mean that we shouldn't tactically realign our forces out of Iraq (perhaps some sent to Iraqi Kurdistan) as part of the global war on Islamic Fascism (aka, "terrorism"), but WE can't view or treat such a retreat from Iraq as a retreat from this war.

Following the line of Islamic (particularly Arab) thinking that any concession by your adversary is a sign of weakness and moral decay, if we were to completely throw Israel over the side of the boat and get out of Iraq, I believe this would just embolden the Islamic world to more aggressively press its attack against Judeo-Christian civilization, in order to resieze Islamic glory that has lied dormant for most of a millenium, and do little to empower Arab or other Islamic moderates to reform their societies. This concept of total victory against non-Islamic culture is grounded in the Koran, in spite of all the BS about Islam being a "peaceful religion" that is spewed out in so many politically correct sound bites by politicians. The Koran and Islamic law treats all other peoples as subordinate peoples to be subjugated to one extent or another, and the only national-level accomodations with non-Muslims can be tactical truces along the pathway to ultimate Islamic dominance. Moreover, Islamic law is not permitted to evolve and adapt from these precepts for a modern world because, to do so, would involve violation of the words of the Koran. In contrast, while Judaism believes in the "chosenness" of the Jewish people, it generally funnels that concept towards bettering the world in general or, at worst, attempting to separate itself from -- not subjogate -- the world or any of its peoples (including the Palestinians -- the most far right of Israelis don't want the Palestinians or their souls, just the land beneath them that is promised to the Jewish people in the bible). Christianity, by and large, has had its reformation, abandoning the concept of bringing the non-Christian world by force to follow its stated, superior path.

The Islamic world needs its reformation. How is it to get there? What do the so-called Islamic moderates need to accomplish this? Can they? How can we help?