On patience: the West vs. Islamicist totalitarianism
[NOTE: This is a re-post of an piece I wrote in 2008. I found it yesterday while doing a search for some information I wanted for a comment, and I thought that, in light of recent news in Syria and elsewhere, it could bear repeating.]
Our post-9/11 unity was fleeting, if not totally illusory. We are now bitterly divided on how to fight the war against Islamicist totalitarianism.
We are divided on whether there is such a war. We are divided on who our most important enemies in that war might be. We are even divided on whether we truly have what we might call enemies, or whether a nice friendly dialogue might not be enough to make us all get along better.
But on reading this article by Clfford D. May in National Review entitled “100 Years of War?”—a reference to Barack Obama’s distortion of John McCain’s remark that we might need to keep troops in Iraq for that long a time, similar to what we’re already doing in Germany and South Korea—it occurred to me that there is another division, and that this division might actually be the heart of the matter.
This split may have begun to occur as early as 9/11 itself, shortly after the towers fell. It has to do with the perception of how long we should expect this fight to take. The division is between those who always assumed it would be long and arduous, and those who did not.
I recall that, perhaps within a few days of the event, I already assumed that this war would last in some form or other for the rest of my life, even if I lived to be a centenarian. I assumed it would be fought on many fronts, and involve skirmishes and battles as well as clandestine operations.
In other words, I assumed it would require patience, fortitude, and skill. There would be no quick fix or simple solutions—even something like the death of bin Laden would hardly end it—and there were bound to be mistakes, disappointments, and more deaths along the way. It would require nothing less than some sort of major change in the Middle East, some cultural and political rearrangement.
It’s not that I wanted this to happen. It’s just that I saw it as an inevitable consequence of facing an enemy so numerous and widespread, so dedicated to destruction and so heedless of the consequences in this lifetime, so focused on the hope of heaven and so aware of the long sweep of history. And for me, this perception had nothing to do with political affiliation; I was still a liberal Democrat, and had been my whole life.
These characteristics of Islamicist totalitarianism may only have become evident to me post-9/11, but that’s not when this war had begun. When was the starting point? Was it years before, when Osama bin Laden declared war on the US (and I, and most of America, hardly noticed)? Was it a few years earlier than that, when the World Trade Center was attacked for the first time? Or perhaps it started a few years earlier still, when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown apart, blasting a hole in the town of Lockerbie? Or before that, when a car bomb exploded in front of the US Embassy in Beirut?
Or was it in 1928 when, as Clifford May points out, the Islamist, Hassan al-Banna described the movement’s goals as: “to dominate . . . to impose its laws on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet”? Or was it at the end of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire was defeated and the spoils partitioned?
Or was it at another defeat for Ottoman dominance, one that came on another September 11 at the Gates of Vienna—this time in the year 1683?
Or maybe it was Lepanto. Or Tours. Or…
We may not be able to place these historic events very well—although most of us can do it a lot better after 9/11 than we would have done before. But be assured that those who are fighting us are on very familiar terms with their meaning and outcome. Islamicist totalitarianism is possessed of a very long memory, and far more patience than we have. And that is a difference of which they are well aware.
In fact, they count on it. And so far we have not disappointed them.
It’s especially odd that we lack the requisite patience, because compared to former wars the sacrifices asked of us have been relatively small. I don’t need to chart the difference in casualties between this conflict and World War II, or between this and the toll of the proxy wars that were fought during the Cold War, including Vietnam. There has been a fundamental change here, both in our ability to fight a long war and in our ability to convey resolve to the enemy.
In a far more difficult and bloody struggle, if a more conventional one, Winston Churchill delivered a message during one of England’s darkest hours, just after Dunkirk. He was addressing Parliament and shoring up the will of his people and their leaders, but he was delivering a message to the enemy, as well [emphasis mine]:
I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected…we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation….Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…
Churchill had the advantage of a country united against an obvious enemy who was directly and openly attacking much of Europe. But that enemy had been obvious—at least to Churchill—years before, and few had listened to him then, when there would have been time to have prevented some of the carnage to follow.
Afterwards, in his post-Dunkirk speech, Churchill was speaking both for the British nation and to the British nation. He was able to be heard, and to be believed, because things had come to a very sorry pass and could no longer be denied, even by those who had done so for a long time previously. But he was also able to speak with such authority because no one could listen to that voice and not be aware that he meant every word he said.
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the dog.
– Mark Twain
Churchill ultimately viewed his life’s work as a failure because his aim was more than winning a war. He meant to save and uplift the soul of the British nation and people, whose spiritual decline in the wake of WW1 worried him tremendously.
Although the British rallied admirably to defeat the Axis, the rally proved to be ad hoc only. The decline of the British national spirit, which is what mattered most to Churchill, resumed after WW2.
This is a good piece and will be evergreen I think.
The Muslim world has been at war with us since Mohammad walked the earth. Not all Muslims, and not all the time, but it’s been consistent enough that even the dimmest detective should regard it as a “clue” to Islam’s true nature.
I think it was also Churchill who said he’d rather have an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep. When I look at what’s called the National Command Authority, I see lots of wool and hear plenty of bleating. Those few who have borne the brunt of the war against the Islamic terrorists deserve better, as do we.
“I already assumed that this war would last in some form or other for the rest of my life…[and that] it would require patience, fortitude, and skill. There would be no quick fix or simple solutions” neo
There is no quick fix or simple solution because we are so deeply divided. At least half of the American public and quite probably 2/3rds accept the premise that; Islam is a ‘religion of peace’ being used by radicals.
And accept the argument that, if Islam itself is our enemy, if Islam itself is at war with the West, then we would have to make war upon a billion+ Muslims, an impractical and immoral proposition.
I argue that neither premise is true but of course as long as a majority of America’s and the West’s citizens believe them to be true, as long as the divide exists, we will face either “The Forever War” or eventually, a nuclear ‘resolution’ to the conflict.
I have yet to experience a substantive rebuttal to either my analysis of or proscription for how to resolve Islamic terrorism.
Not that it is possible to create and enforce such a doctrine now, for clearly the conditions in support of it do not presently exist but rather that no one has convincingly shown how its reasoning to be faulty.
If it is not logically flawed, then it becomes a viable solution to consider after we lose our first city to a nuclear/WMD attack, a probability that the FBI has publicly declared to be 100% certain.
Regarding Churchill’s view of islam;
Winston Churchill on Islam
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.
The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property — either as a child, a wife, or a concubine — must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
Some interesting results from a June 9-11 Fox News poll:
Heartening, that 77% who think it’s a top priority.
That 53% who liken it to the war on drugs or the war on poverty seems to indicate an understanding that it will go on a very long time. But it would also seem to indicate that it shouldn’t really be fought with everything we have.
Also, a big change since January 2009, when 62% thought it was a real war and 33% thought it a figure-of-speech war.
After the war, they got rid of Winston Churchill in favor of a socialist “war on poverty” scheme. The unity of war, the success of its progress against real enemies (external or internal) was harnessed for a domestic war in which “fake enemies of poverty and discrimination” were invented for those power maniacs and megalomaniacs to utilize.
Thus a nation’s progress of war, turned to socialism and the UK of today.
Sounds like Bush->Obama eras.
Consider that Churchill wrote “The River War” in 1899. In those days before political correctness, he had Islam pegged, and could say so in print without fear of perpetually-enraged Muslims attacking him or his publisher. Unfortunately, his comments about Christianity in a European context seem almost quaint. It is telling that African and Southeast Asian Christian missionaries are now proselytizing in Britain to persuade Britons to rejoin the faith of their ancestors.