Post by khalid bin lukman on Nov 21, 2007 14:25:11 GMT -1
What History Teaches Us about the War on Terror
Tim Holloway
It has been said that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. However, repeating history is not always a bad thing. Just as we learn from our past mistakes, we can also learn from our past successes. At a time when America is facing arguably the most dangerous existential threat ever, what can we learn from our past failures and triumphs to give us guidance in dealing with the War on Terror?
The first step in winning the War on Terror is to quit calling it the War on Terror. Although terrorism is the preferred method of our adversary, we are not, nor could we be, at war with terrorism; it is simply a tactic. The single greatest threat we face today is the threat of radical fundamentalist Islamists. It is a fight with those adherents to a religious, sociological, and geo-political dogma that will be satisfied only when they achieve domination of the entire world. Their goals will not be achieved until an Islamic caliphate is instituted across the globe, with Islamic Law – known as shar’ia law - as the only law allowed to govern the subjugated populace. The people of the world ultimately would be forced either to convert to Islam, to accept second-class status, or to die.
This notion is anathema to the West, and particularly to the principles upon which our nation and society are founded; we must have the courage and strength to declare war upon those radical fundamentalist Islamists who threaten our way of life. We also must pronounce that we will oppose their efforts until they are absolutely defeated, and assist all others who oppose the imposition of Islamic Law upon the unwilling.
We have faced such a threat before in our time and the lessons learned from our success in so doing are instructive to how we should proceed today. In a not-too-distant time, we faced an enemy determined to impose a cruel, flawed and inferior ideology upon civilization across the globe. They sought world domination based upon a non-religious, sociological and geo-political dogma. Just like today’s radical fundamentalist Islamists, Soviet-backed Communists first sought to expand their reach into countries torn by strife with weak political, social and cultural institutions. Then, as now, their leaders squelched the rights of others while at the same time exploited Americans’ rights by bringing their vitriolic and inflammatory speech to our shores.
A generation ago, Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and others had the courage to identify and challenge our adversary. Reagan did it most directly in naming our enemy, the Soviet Union, as the “evil empire”. While this upset some on the international stage, for Americans it largely united our nation against an enemy, and it became the foundation of a united effort to defeat it unequivocally. George W. Bush followed this lead briefly with his reference to an “axis of evil”. At a recent speech at DePaul University, Iranian dissident, Amir Abbas Fahkravar spoke emotionally of how this simple phrase gave hope to him, and to many other Iranians, that America was serious about defeating radical fundamentalist Islamists. Unfortunately, Bush then forgot about some of the other lessons of the Cold War - and other wars - and began to embark on the perpetually failing policies of nation-building and not fighting a war surely enough to win it.
As the presidential campaign season is now moving into full swing, there is little evidence that we will see the kind of leadership we need to identify and utterly defeat our enemy. We are left with foreign policy by sound bite. A serious threat to the United States is being addressed with political talking points rather than with well thought out and comprehensive solutions. Our presidential wannabes are simply playing to their bases, being cautious to appear appropriately hawkish or dovish as determined by their varied constituencies.
What is needed is the type of leadership that says clearly and without equivocation that we are at war with radical fundamentalist Islamists. That we must abandon the notion of peaceful coexistence as these are unacceptable terms to our adversary who seeks, instead, domination. Leadership is needed that recognizes that the strategy necessary to defeat our enemy must involve diplomacy, unilateral and international economic sanctions, the threat and use of military force, and voluntary efforts of coercion and support from religious, social and political non-governmental organizations.
During the Cold War, we had the courage to identify our adversary as the “evil empire” behind the “iron curtain”. We passed the Lodge Act, allowing the military to recruit, train and employ a sort of foreign legion to oppose the Soviet Union. We aggressively undermined the Soviet Union and encouraged resistance and subterfuge through the Voice of America and other means. President Reagan authorized the deliberate corruption of U.S. technology stolen by the Russians, which led to the cataclysmic destruction of a trans-Siberian natural gas pipeline. Pope John Paul II went into Communist-controlled Poland in 1979, held mass and directly confronted the atheistic notions of Communism; in so doing, it began a domino effect which eventually ended Communist control of much of Eastern Europe. And in perhaps the seminal moment of the Cold War, Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate and challenged Gorbachev directly to “tear down this wall”.
These strategies employed throughout the Cold War undermined and hastened the demise of an inferior worldview. Similar strategies can work again to defeat radical fundamentalist Islamists. If we are to begin the path to the destruction of these fascists, the West, under the leadership of the United States, must direct every facet of its power and influence to wage "total war" against our adversary. We must urge the business and financial communities to complicate matters for those states supporting, assisting or turning a blind eye to the radical fundamental Islamists in their midst. We must employ official sanctions to place economic hardship on our enemy. We must use our military force not as a diplomatic or social engineering tool but as a tool to eliminate potential threats. Our diplomatic cadre must work with our international partners to support unilateral and international efforts to weaken our adversary and support those who oppose their flawed worldview. We must call upon our social and religious organizations to offer support and encouragement to those trapped under the oppressive thumb of radical fundamentalist Islamists. This is all possible with courageous and consistent leadership.
It took several generations to defeat Communism and it is likely to take just as long to defeat our current enemy. As Americans, we owe it to ourselves and to future generations to unite in principle and purpose and commit ourselves to a strategy for victory. Just like Communism, and its sibling Nazism, radical fundamentalist Islamism is destined eventually to join the ash heap of history, as it is a flawed and barbarous philosophy inconsistent with human nature. It is only a matter of how long it will take and how much suffering will be endured along the way. Leadership and unity behind a sensible comprehensive strategy can hasten that course and limit the suffering.
We must demand that our next president heed the lessons of history, of both our failures and our successes, and seize the opportunity to unite and unabashedly lead the free peoples of the world to victory.
www.familysecuritymatters.org/terrorism.php?id=1385340