Islamism - The solution - The Islamic world must change
Violent, radical, utopian Islamism
poses a global challenge to all free societies.
How big that challenge is remains to be seen.
But the solution to that challenge is clear.
The solution is not to appease these violent, intolerant religious bigots.
The solution is that America and the
West must assert themselves.
The Islamic world must change.
Ultimately, by a long cold war and a few hot wars,
the modern totalitarian ideology
of Islamism must be destroyed.
Islamism - or any ideology that denies religious freedom -
should have no place in our world.
It is clear that the West is under imminent nuclear threat.
It is clear that if Al Qaida get a nuclear weapon,
they will use it immediately.
Optimism
- Let's change
the Islamic world
To prevent nuclear attack on the West, Islamism must be defanged and destroyed.
America's lasting reaction to Sept 11th
may not be the reaction bin Laden expected.
America's strong, lasting reaction is:
Let's change the Islamic world.
Existing regimes must be ended,
and replaced with free societies.
Note this is not what the Islamofascists want.
Indeed, it is the opposite of what they want.
- Madrid
shows the alternative strategy of appeasement.
Not responding to attacks -
in the hope that the attacker will go away.
Appeasement generally leads to far more bloodshed than responding.
- Offence, not defence
-
The Bush Doctrine in Light of Madrid
- Thomas Patrick Carroll
on how defence is not enough.
"The carnage in Madrid is a glimpse of the future for any nation in which counterterrorism passes for a national strategy against destructive ideologies like militant Islam.
The great virtue of the Bush doctrine is its aggressive, even belligerent, stance against al-Qaida and the states that enable it.
The best we can hope for from the defensive model are reasonably long breathers
- months, maybe even several years - between vicious and evermore deadly attacks. Only a strategy that promotes genuine change in the Middle East, as the Bush doctrine does, holds out the possibility of victory and an end to terror."
-
Israel's Fence and the Return to the Barbaric Past
- John Lewis
on the continued existence of
barbarism in the world.
He rejects the idea that the solution is for the free countries
to defend themselves against the barbarians indefinitely.
- ".. every nation in the world .. has
accepted primitive warlords as a fact of modern life.
But this cannot last.
Every ancient walled fortress eventually fell, since a good defense
could at best hold off invaders for
a while."
- The only long-term solution is to go on the offensive and end
barbarism in this world.
This is another version of the proposition that
war will never end until non-democracy ends.
- Deterrence won't work
- Beyond Deterrence
- article by Stanley Kurtz.
- Deterrence won't work with this enemy.
It's time for an era of pre-emptive invasion.
- Samuel Huntington
- "a strategy which allows for preemptive war against
urgent, immediate and serious threats is absolutely essential for the US
and other Western powers in this period. Our enemies - primarily
militant Islam, but also other groups - cannot be deterred, that much is
obvious, so it is essential - if they are preparing an attack against us
- that
we attack first."
Let's change the Middle East
- We have no choice
by Victor Davis Hanson.
- America is on the march
- "Two years ago nuts in caves talked about Americans
who were scared to fight; now the world is worried because we
fight too quickly and too well."
-
Bush Didn't Squander the World's Sympathy; He Spent It
by Jonathan Rauch
- In the Cold War,
the US supported Arab and Islamic tyrannies
and
not Arab and Islamic democrats.
This policy is now over.
- "This is a breathtakingly bold undertaking. The difficulties are staggering. Everything might go wrong. But the crucial point to remember is that everything had already gone wrong. No available policy could justify optimism in the Arab world, but the new policy at least offers hope. It offers a path ahead, a future where there had been only a past.
...
Spending the world's goodwill on reform in the Arab world is the most dangerous course the Bush administration could have set, except for all the others."
-
Looking on the Bright Side
(also here)
- optimism by Fareed Zakaria
- "There are always risks involved when things change. But
for the past 40 years the fear of these risks has paralyzed
Western policy toward the Middle East. And what has come of
this caution? Repression, radical Islam and terror. I'll take my
chances with change."
- And if it works, let us always remember that France and Germany,
and all the "anti-war" youth,
tried to stop it happening.
- Christopher Hitchens
says this is very exciting for freedom-lovers,
and terrifying for the Islamofascists:
"After Sept. 11, several conservative policy-makers
decided in effect that there were "root causes"
behind the murder-attacks. These "root causes" lay
in the political slum that the United States
has been running in the region, and in the rotten nexus
of client-states from Riyadh to Islamabad. Such causes cannot be
publicly admitted, nor can they be addressed all at once.
But a slum-clearance program is beginning to form."
- This may fail, but it's worth trying:
- Yes, this is incredibly daring and hopeful.
It may fail.
Democracy and freedom may be simply impossible for Arabs.
We may have to return to a clamped-down era
of friendly dictators and realpolitik.
But realpolitik sure doesn't look like the
safest option right now.
What a fantastic world if we could build something different.
It has to be tried, at least once.
-
A US soldier at the front in Iraq in 2004 says it best
- "Long term prospects - I have to admit that after one year here I am largely pessimistic.
Iraqi society is sick in many ways. Sometimes it's hard to tell if Saddam was the problem
or the symptom. I just don't know how a society so divided along ethnic and tribal lines,
with no democratic or liberal traditions and almost zero respect for the rule of law can
build any kind of society
[except an] autocratic one. I'm not ashamed that the US came
here with good intentions and noble sentiments about the universality of our values -
democracy, liberty, the rule of law etc., but I think all our efforts might be eventually
futile. In essence, we have given the Iraqis an enormous gift, but they don't seem to be
seizing the opportunity. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink ..."
- It's too early to tell if this will fail.
But we have to try.
And if it fails, in 10 years time we have to try again.
I believe in democracy, human rights, free speech
and freedom of religion
for all mankind,
including the Arab world.
That is why I am a neo-conservative
rather than a leftist.
Leftists only believe in these things for westerners.
Iraq (separate page)
- Afghanistan
- Al-Qa'ida, who had attacked America,
and killed thousands of Americans for no reason,
were supported by the Taliban of Afghanistan.
The US, incredibly reasonably, offered to allow the Taliban butchers
to stay in power
enslaving their own people
if they would hand over Al-Qa'ida.
The Taliban refused.
So the US took out the Al-Qa'ida bases
and destroyed the Taliban regime,
in just five weeks.
- Iraq
- The butcher Saddam Hussein enslaved his people
and threatened the world.
The US, incredibly reasonably, offered to allow him remain in power,
murdering and torturing and robbing his own people,
if he ceased to threaten the rest of the world.
Saddam refused.
So the US destroyed his entire regime,
in just three weeks.
- Libya
folds without even waiting to be invaded:
-
Message received: "America wins"
by Mark Steyn
- "You don't invade Iraq in order to invade everywhere else, you invade Iraq so you
don't have to invade everywhere else."
- Iran
- Time for the mullahs to go.
The Islamic revolution was a failure
and it is time to abandon it.
- North Korea
- Now probably the most evil, unstable, dangerous
regime in the world.
- Saudi Arabia
- The source of anti-American and anti-Jewish poison.
- Sudan
- Another candidate for the most evil regime in the world.
Cartoon from Cox and Forkum in 2003
(see here).
See Cartoon Use Policy.
Also on Those Shirts t-shirt
(see here).
Next (after Iraq)
-
Iraq and Iran are the best places to pick
to start changing the Middle East,
because there the governments are most hated by their people.
- "the great
paradox of the modern Middle East: the so-called
moderate regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt
have populations irate with anti-American and
anti-Western sentiments, while among the people in
rogue regimes like Iran, Iraq and Syria, there is
sympathy for the West and support for the new
American mantra for regime change."
- Mark Goldblatt
on how it won't stop with Iraq.
- "And after Saddam? Maybe Syria. Maybe Iran. Maybe the Sudan.
...
Beyond that, the writing will be on the wall for Libya.
For Egypt. For Saudi Arabia.
Wherever radical Islam festers, we will go.
And we will go in force, and in waves ...
After a time, the people themselves won't wait for us"
-
The war is going well
- roundup country-by-country
by Charles Krauthammer after Iraq
- "[In] every [single]
country from the Khyber Pass to the Mediterranean Sea
... the forces of moderation have been strengthened.
This is a huge strategic advance"
-
Bush's State of the Union Address, Jan 2004
- "9 months of intense negotiations involving the United States and Great Britain
succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of
diplomacy with Iraq did not. And one reason is clear:
For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible, and no one can
now doubt the word of America."
-
"From the beginning, America has sought international support for our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we have
gained much support. There is a difference, however, between leading a coalition of many nations, and submitting to
the
objections of a few.
America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country."
-
"We also hear doubts that democracy is a realistic goal for the greater Middle East, where freedom is rare. Yet it is
mistaken, and condescending, to assume that whole cultures and great religions are incompatible with liberty and
self-government. I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom. And even when that
desire is crushed by tyranny for decades, it will rise again."
- Don't stop now
-
Orson Scott Card
- "I would not have chosen Afghanistan and Iraq to start with
... But once we chose Afghanistan and Iraq, once we began a serious campaign, we must continue the war until we achieve our objective,
which is to remove all the governments that sponsor terror, or convince the remaining sponsors of terror to absolutely, thoroughly, and
completely reverse their policy ...
Anything
less, and all our effort
- all those American lives
- were wasted."
-
These five regimes must go,
by Mark Steyn
- the five regimes of Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and North Korea must go
"if you want to be able
to get to anything like a victory in this war"
- Angelo M. Codevilla says the war may have to go much further:
-
No Victory, No Peace
by Angelo M. Codevilla
- If we stop now, after Iraq, we will lose.
We need to do much more.
- "nothing less than the bloody demise of
the most egregious anti-American regimes
[will] convince the others not to foster or allow terrorism. Only this
[will] give us
peace."
-
War At Last?
by Angelo M. Codevilla
- "Where did all the Nazis go?"
- To destroy an ideology, you have to go after the regimes.
When the regimes are defeated, utterly defeated,
people, strangely enough,
abandon the ideology overnight
and pretend they never held it.
Where is Nazism now?
-
Norman Podhoretz on Angelo M. Codevilla
- "Of all the attacks on the Bush Doctrine, this set of arguments is the only one that resonates with me"
- but ultimately he finds it too extreme, too unnecessary (hopefully).
Victory may be achieved without such total war (as the Cold War showed).
-
An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror
by David Frum and Richard Perle
- what to do next
- a "manual for victory".
- See summary.
- Interview
- Frum says we can win without (too much) further war:
"Richard and I are often accused of believing that military power is the answer to everything. On the contrary, we believe that it is the answer to
some things - as opposed to those who believe it is the answer to nothing. Force is to international relations what cash is to transactions between banks: the medium of final
resort. So long as a bank is known to have abundant cash, it can do its business on credit; and so long as a nation is known to be ready to fight if necessary, it will discover that
the necessity arises very seldom."
Let's change the world
- The fight for human freedom
- WW2, the Cold War,
and now the War on Terror.
-
Our Own Hundred Years' War
by Clark S. Judge
- How we won WW2 and the Cold War.
- World War 4
- This is World War 4.
- This is World War 4
by Eliot A. Cohen
(the Cold War
was World War 3)
- This is big.
This could be the beginning of the end for Islamic fundamentalism,
and the dawn of a new era of democracy and freedom
in the Islamic world.
- R. James Woolsey
- World War IV
- speech, November 16, 2002
- "I don't believe this terror war is ever really going to go away until we change
the face of the Middle East.
..
This will take time. It will be difficult. But I think we need to say to both the terrorists
and the dictators and also to the autocrats who from time to time are friendly with us,
that we know, we understand we are going to make you nervous.
..
We want you to be nervous."
-
At war for freedom
- Norman Podhoretz
Can the Arab world become democratic?
Optimism
- Optimism from
Victor Davis Hanson:
- The Iron Veil
predicts that the Islamic fascist regimes of the Middle East
could collapse rapidly like communism.
- The World Upside Down
- "Like the
weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, what is ahead is fraught with uncertainty
and fear, but it is also, in some strange and macabre way, full of rare hope as well."
-
From Manhattan to Baghdad
- "Are we, then, confronted with a clash of civilizations? Not really, but rather the tottering of the last impediments to the
reform of the Arab world before it joins the world of nations, and embraces freedom and tolerance, which alone can
provide it with security and prosperity. While there are hundreds of thousands of terrorists and state fascists in almost
every Arab government, hundreds of millions of more ordinary citizens are watching this war to see who will win and
what the ultimate settlement will consist of. Many, perhaps the majority, may for the moment have their hearts with bin
Laden and Saddam Hussein, but their minds ultimately will convince them to join the victors and a promising future, rather
than the losers and a bleak past."
-
Again and again, war leads to unintended, unpredictable consequences
- and 9/11 may not have been an Islamist success,
but rather, in the long term,
the shot that destroyed the entire Islamist world.
"The suicide bombs and explosions that go off daily in Iraq are not proof that Americans
are losing the Sunni Triangle, but rather that thousands of secular and religious fascists
are desperate not to lose their entire Middle East."
- Optimism from
Bill Whittle:
- "Power"
- Islamism as the last chance, the furious last stand,
of the enemies of
human freedom.
The Islamists represent a 5,000 year
tradition of human tyranny and oppression,
that pre-dates Islam
and that now, in this 21st century, may finally be coming to an end,
to be replaced by global democracy:
- "There is loose in the world a cancer, a cult of death and destruction,
a force that loves nothing but destruction and pain and revenge for slights real and
imagined. We face people whose hatred and rage sends them into fits of ecstasy
at the thought of their own children being blown to bloody shreds so
long as they can kill as many innocents as possible."
- "It is a sickness, it is a disease - it is, in fact,
the last animal howling
of rage and impotence at a new idea of humanity
that is, at a long, bloody and
terrible price, fighting and winning a war against racism, sexism,
religious extremism, tribalism, conformity and slavery."
- "Rafts" -
"The forces of ignorance and barbarism
- bearers of ruin and despair
wherever they make camp -
are growing in confidence. But beside their will to destroy and die they have nothing.
These Death Cult barbarians think this is all they will need
...
I still hold out hope that they will crack open a second book - a history book, say
- that might at the eleventh hour give them some insight into the avocado nature of the Civilization
they seem determined now to assault: soft and pulpy on the outside, impenetrably tough and hard within.
They are going to do more than chip a tooth on us, ...
they are about to make, I think, the same mistake that others have made before them
- to see the Cindy Sheehans and Michael Moores as representative of a corrupt and dying culture,
rather than what they really are: somewhat entertaining animal acts we Westerners use
to pass the time while waiting for the next opportunity to pull the gloves off,
and kick some new inhuman, barbaric horde onto the ash heap of history"
"This is an amazing victory,
a victory over
a monster who gassed
civilians, jailed children, sent millions into fruitless wars, harbored
poisonous weapons to threaten free peoples, tortured thousands,
and made alliances with every two-bit opportunist on the planet.
It's a victory over
those who marched in the millions to stop this
liberation,
over the endless media cynics, over the hate-America
crowd, and the armchair generals. It's a victory for the two
countries in the world that have always made freedom possible
and who have now brought it to another corner of the world made
dark by terror. It's a victory for the extraordinary servicemen and
women who performed this task with such skill, cool, courage
and restraint. It's a victory for optimism over pessimism, the
righting of past wrongs, the assertion of universal truths against
postmodern excuses,
and of political leadership over appeasement.
Celebrate it. Don't let the whiners take this away from you"
-
Andrew Sullivan
on the fall of Iraq, 2003
"Let's get rid of them all"
- Tony Blair on the regimes of the unfree world.
"I will do whatever the Americans
want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was
afraid."
- An unnamed dictator,
quoted by Silvio Berlusconi after the Iraq war.
It turns out
it was Gaddafi!
"Others understand the historic importance of our work. The terrorists know.
They know that a vibrant, successful democracy at the heart of the Middle East
will discredit their radical ideology of hate.
They know that men and women with hope and purpose and dignity do not strap bombs on their bodies
and kill the innocent.
The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear
- and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.
...
I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century.
I believe that millions in the Middle East plead in silence for their liberty.
I believe that given the chance, they will embrace the most honorable form of government ever devised by man.
...
This young century will be liberty's century.
By promoting liberty abroad, we will build a safer world.
...
Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom."
-
President Bush's speech,
Republican National Convention, Sept 2004.
Return to
Islamism
page.
by Freedom House, 2004,
shows that the situation with Islam
is not as bad as you might think.
The majority (60 percent)
of the world's Muslims now live in "Free"
or "Partly Free" societies.
Only 40 percent live in "Not Free" societies.
It's got even better.
Indonesia,
the world's most populous Muslim state,
is now rated "Free".