Melanie Phillips: on the desire to end “forever wars”
This piece by Melanie Phillips packs a lot into a fairly short essay. Phillips is a British writer who is a former liberal and who is not the least bit “woke” in her opinions. I believe she is spot on about the Western dream of ending “forever wars” against Muslim extremists who are committed to waging war forever – or until they win:
….[T]he west has continued to repeat its fiascos by indulging in the same fantasies that it will end the “forever wars” — whether through the Israel-Palestine “peace process,” the Iran nuclear deal or abandoning Afghanistan, where both British and American governments are now spinning themselves the fantasy that Taliban “realists” will keep the Taliban jihadists in check.
For Islamists, war is indeed forever. For such fanatics, defeat is only ever temporary.
For the west, however, there are no “forever wars.” Its wars are either won or lost; there are victors and vanquished.
And military strength matters less than belief. The 9/11 attackers didn’t use sophisticated military hardware. They hijacked civilian aircraft and turned them into ying human bombs of enormous destructive potential.
What fuels the jihad is the power of an idea. That idea is the cult of death.
To overcome a cult of death, the west needs a belief in life. Its own life. That is the way to draw the necessary courage and resolve from this most sombre anniversary [of 9/11]; but alas, it seems the most difficult of lessons to learn.
It is understandable to yearn for peace. But if the enemy doesn’t believe in it, we cannot pretend – actually, we can pretend, but the results will be disastrous. Sometimes the only way to get the enemy to believe in peace is to vanquish that enemy. That may seem paradoxical to some people, but it’s not.
This might be a good time to call your attention to a discussion between Victor Davis Hanson and H. R. McMaster on Afghanistan. In it they touch on why we were in Afghanistan, how long we should have stayed there, and how the situation was rarely properly explained to the American public over the years. It’s a long video, but it’s not necessary to watch the whole thing to get something out of it:
One thing Hanson and McMaster discuss in that video is a speech Trump gave on Afghanistan on August 22, 2017. They think it was a good one; you can find the text here if you’re interested. I didn’t recall writing about it, but indeed I did, and here’s my post on the subject.
[NOTE: I also wrote a somewhat relevant post in 2007 about the general belief that “war is not the answer.”]
It takes two sides to agree war in not the answer, One side never has said that in over 1200 years
The Left has enabled Islamists since Barack days, Sundowner and Miley have armed them better than they ever had.
Have feeling you will see if war is the answer soon enough.
I learned from VDH that war only ends when one side knows it is defeated. We had to drop a second nuke on the Japanese and then it still took days for them to surrender.
The Islamists will never quit. The problem is that their women keep turning out babies that are only too happy to sign up for jihad. I suppose education would teach those cavemen that there is no upside to endless war, but I doubt they can be educated.
And I’ve seen stats that due to inbreeding, the average IQ in Muslim countries is very low. Am I allowed to say that?
When we were energy independent, we could ignore those loons. We can still get there.
I suppose that the best idea is to contain them, but that’s a tough thing to pull off.
My biggest fear now is that Iran builds a nuke. Thankfully, Israel will do something before that happens. I hope.
China, of course, is the main beneficiary. We spent a fortune in Afghanistan and the CCP is building 300 new ICBM nuke silos.
Phillips is right about the ideology. Pretending it isn’t there is dangerous.
Cornhead, I don’t know about IQ, but inbreeding in tribal Islamic societies certainly produces a higher rate of birth defects. Plus, pregnant women persist in trying to fast (no food or water) from dawn to dusk during Ramadan, which also causes developmental problems for infants.
“I’ll tell you what war is about. You’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.”
General Curtis LeMay, quoted by Richard Rhodes in _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_, p. 586
Just as Islam will never give up trying to destroy Western Civilization, the Radical Left will never give up trying to destroy American Exceptionalism.
The only solution, in both cases, can be found in Richard Ferndandez’s “Three Conjectures.”
}}} The 9/11 attackers didn’t use sophisticated military hardware.
In a sense, they actually did. Civilian aircraft, filled with thousands of gallons of jet fuel, are a pretty sophisticated variety of hardware. And using one to deliver what is essentially a giant fuel-air bomb to a pair of buildings is pretty sophisticated. It was sophisticated enough that no one had really thought about doing it before.
TBH, *I* had, kinda-sorta-almost… until that point I asserted, openly, that, lacking any event of that sort, international terrorism was greatly overblown. I figured it would be more a matter of shooting down a plane with a smuggled air-to-air missile, but this was a pretty spectacular example of what can be accomplished by lateral thinking, for sure.
}}} It takes two sides to agree war in not the answer, One side never has said that in over 1200 years
Why is there more hate than love?
Why is there more war than peace?
Simple: It takes TWO to love. It takes TWO to have peace.
All it takes for hate or war is for one side to approve of it.
And Islam is very much a religion of peace. The Peace of the Grave. It is a recipe for the destruction of all mankind.
^^^^ And, of course, if I said the above on FB, I’d get a ban. Idiots. :-/
McMaster was a dishonorable enemy of Trump who pretended to loyally serve him.
Cornhead,
Islam and its agents can be easily defeated. It’s not the means the West lacks but the will. All it would take is identifying Islam itself as our enemy and ‘targeted consequences’ for terrorist attacks. The nature of those consequences is what would deter jihadists.
You gain leverage over an enemy by attaching to the aggression you wish to deter, what for the enemy are intolerable and unthinkable consequences.
Cap’n Rusty,
You kill a snake by cutting off its head. Then a Constitutional Amendment that permanently outlaws all collectivist ideologies. Permanent loss of citizenship and mandatory deportation for violators of that law henceforth. The death penalty for any who illegally attempt to return.
We can end forever wars if we are willing to kill them by the carload without regard to “collateral damage.” That is the sole way known to humankind on earth. Everything else is a fantasy of the most deadly sort and will lead to the end of millions of us instead of tens of millions of them. A sad and bloody conclusion, but the only one.
As I wrote in a poem called “Only by Fire is Fascism Finished” composed in Brooklyn in the first month after 9/11:
The ash that descends in the September skies
Where the leapers swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer
With that fire which hollows the bones.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Speaking of the power of the Internet…
Glenn Greenwald lays it all out.
“New Proof Emerges About the Hunter Biden Laptop: a Definitive Account of the CIA/Media Fraud”
https://rumble.com/vmteq5-new-proof-emerges-about-the-hunter-biden-laptop-a-definitive-account-of-the.html
Well, if we are talking poetry…. Back in the thirties/forties there was an American bohemian feminist poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, who achieved critical and popular success, had been a pacifist during WW I, yet came out swinging hard against the Axis for WW II. She had choice words for Isolationists:
____________________________________________
There Are No Islands, Any More
Dear Isolationist, you are
So very, very insular!
Surely you do not take offense?-
The word’s well used in such a sense.
‘Tis you, not I, sir, who insist
You are an Isolationist.
…
Dear Islander, I envy you:
I’m very fond of islands, too;
And few the pleasures I have known
Which equaled being left alone.
Yet matters from without intrude
At times upon my solitude:
A forest fire, a dog run mad,
A neighbor stripped of all he had
By swindlers, or the shrieking plea
For help, of stabbed Democracy.
…
(The tidal wave devours the shore:
There are no islands any more.)
…
Oh, build, assemble, transport, give,
That England, France and we may live,
Before tonight, before too late,
To those who build our country’s fate
In desperate fingers, reaching out
For weapons we confer about,
All that we can, and more, and now!
Oh, God, let not the lovely brow
Of Freedom in the trampled mud
Grow cold! Have we no brains, no blood,
No enterprise-no any thing
Of which we proudly talk and sing,
Which we like men can bring to bear
For Freedom, and against Despair?
Lest French and British fighters, deep
In battle, needing guns and sleep,
For lack of aid be overthrown
And we be left to fight alone.
–Edna St Vincent Millay (1940)
Off topic: Whatever happened to Zombietime? There’s been nothing new since 2017, and the last few years have had tons of things Zombietime could’ve recorded and shared.
I hope they are okay…
Melanie Phillips is OK to fight Islam to the last Appalachian White Male who managed to dodge Fentanyl and Oxy*Contin. That’s mighty big of her.
Be a lot simpler to just not import the #$%^ers en masse and blow up more wedding parties in retaliation if they get too far out of line.
She would have spent half her life pushing immigration and generalized degeneracy in the UK (began career at the Guardian and New Statesman) before waking up to the fact that golly gee now she didn’t live quite as safely and comfortably as she used to do as a slight misfit in Merrie England, but instead was somehow a resident of Londonistan… and that you could smell the kebabs from the leafiest bits of Hampstead and Golders Green on a clear day…. And Bam! A Conservative! Bit late. So why listen to her bleating now? It’s all about But Is it Good for Melanie Phillips?
GvdL whom I admire greatly in all other respects might enlighten us on just precisely how Wahhabi Islam relates to… you know Fascism. Because José Antonio Primo de Rivera just reminds me totally that I need to go blow myself up inside a PX. Precision in Language and all that. Lapidary it ain’t. One gets the feeling that the issue is being neatly dodged here. “Islamofascism” is ridiculous cant dreamed up by various usual Neocon suspects and parroted mindlessly by American ‘Conservatives’ for whom religion and the religious experience are LARPs even more than Conservatism itself is. Somewhat excusable in the heat of the moment back when… but this Islamofascism mythical misdirection and mind-hack needs to go.
Now I used to think that nuking Mecca would be a capital idea. Not so sure anymore. How’d the destruction of the Second Temple work out? 😀
Still… if any ‘Conservatives’ insist on still advocating this approach… best remember that Islam has THREE Holy Cities. Turn one into a giant radioactive hole in the ground and the other two just become, well, more Holy. Have to whack ‘em all. I’ll just go get another coffee while the implications of that sink in and heads explode.
You’re right, of course, that from the Islamist point of view the war can’t end until it’s won- meaning all infidels are subjugated, converted, or killed. The question that has to be answered by us infidels is, is it better to keep up a constant low-intensity fight, as the Afghan conflict had become, or monitor the Islamists as best we can, suppressing their terrorism when we can and retaliating hard when we fail to prevent their attacks. Option 3 would be to mirror the Islamist position, (full-on warfare until they’re all subjugated, converted, or killed), but that would be too much for our delicate western sensibilities. I don’t believe there is any real possibility of turning countries like Afghanistan and the wilder parts of Pakistan into anything that can really coexist with western-style civilization. The best we can hope for is containment.
I’ll just go get another coffee while the implications of that sink in and heads explode.
Zaphod:
Excuse us, while your head explodes that we aren’t bowled over. Don’t flatter yourself.
It’s difficult to persuade people, if that’s your intent, when you wear your disrespect so prominently on your sleeve.
If you’re here to be the Bad Boy, that’s pretty limited too.
@Huxley:
Any persuasion is a bonus side-effect of much-needed ridicule of toxic ideas and insane-level hacking of the Liberal Democratic (erk) Mind to go off and do illiberal undemocratic things at home and abroad because… Muslims! Or Chinese!
The whole thing is a gigantic load of horse%^&@ and people need to Just Stop and sort out their own countries. If anyone hasn’t learned by now that *very* loose coupling between nations and peoples is the way to go…
I’m sick unto death of Neocons who can’t get their heads around the very basic concept that if you squeeze a balloon in one place, it’s going to bulge out unexpectedly in other places. Mixing metaphors —> Whack a Mole —> Hey-Ho Forever Wars. Handy if you’re Melanie Phillips and have a boner for a destablised Arab and Persian Middle East… But seriously, how’s it improving *your* quality of life?
Nothing wrong with a bit of high tech gunboat diplomacy from orbit. The rest is evil and stupid and needs to be mocked mercilessly.
Zaphod:
How about you knock off your “Épater la bourgeoisie” bullshit? I’m sick to death of that and smart-alecky fellas who consider it a Life Mission.
Ridicule is easy. How’s it improving the Quality of *Your* Life?
Pointing fingers is even easier.
Neo said:
“Sometimes the only way to get the enemy to believe in peace is to vanquish that enemy.”
GB said:
“All it would take is identifying Islam itself as our enemy…”
And there is the nub. To vanquish an enemy you first have to identify the enemy. Until you do you can’t even attack the enemy as all you are attacking are replaceable tools that the enemy has a-plenty.
Plus even Islam, though an enemy, is being used as a tool too. But it is not one that is easily replaced by that greater enemy user.
Zaphod:
Saying something vehemently and colorfully doesn’t make it so.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen you mount an actual argument. You just say what you think, as though it’s the obvious truth, and insult everyone who disagrees – that is, when you’re not busy knocking down the strawmen you’ve constructed.
Melanie Phillips has “a boner for a destablised Arab and Persian Middle East” – sure thing, Zaphod, if you say so – and you’ve got a boner for the sound of your own voice (and/or the look of your own words) saying unserious and basically silly, shallow, and pretend-tough things about what other people think.
Among other things, you write that Phillips spent “half her life” “pushing immigration and generalized degeneracy in the UK.” Phillips is seventy years old. She started her political change in the early 1980s, almost forty years ago (at around 30), and she quit the Guardian in 1993, in her early 40s, after years of public disagreement with the paper. She didn’t start writing an opinion column there until 1987, so she was writing opinion columns there for just a few years, and mostly after her switch to the right.
The majority of her writing life was spend on the right (I’m assuming we’re not counting her childhood in that “half her life” of yours?). I can’t find any of her early work online, and so I don’t know what views she held back then. Do you? What did she actually write on immigration, or on what you call “generalized degeneracy”? I’m quite curious to see, so if you have a link you should offer it.
Whatever those early views, why would they be relevant at this point? Plenty of people change their political positions as they grow older – so what? She changed quite a long time ago.
Head screwed on the (more) right way:
(Although what in the name of all that is Unholy is a ‘Democratic World Order?’)
http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2021/09/the-war-on-terror-sacrificed-thousands.html
“Our various enemies were correct in assuming that our political leaders lacked the will to make the necessary decisions. Where they erred was in assuming too much and pushing too far. The Japanese made that mistake in Pearl Harbor, the Soviets in Berlin, and Al Qaeda on 9/11. The Jihadists haven’t made one final mistake yet, but history suggests that they will.
America, to its friends and enemies, and to its own patriots, can be an infuriating mix of weakness and strength, idealism and corruption, division and unity. And it’s never entirely clear, even to us, when the tipping point that turns one into the other will unexpectedly arrive.
The great tragedy of the aftermath of September 11 is that our leaders proved willing to sacrifice soldiers, but not the dream of a democratic world order, and instead sacrificed lives to that dream. They took the road that was easiest for them and hardest for so many military men.
The War on Terror only became a forever war because we failed to confront two of the three pillars from which the enemy draws its strength. After two decades, we’ve seen the limitations of a military option that is not combined with foreign policy and immigration decisions that would cut off the true economic and demographic sources of the enemy’s strength. Until our leaders are ready to make the hard choices and our people are ready to elect those who will, the forever wars will go on, not just in distant countries, but in the streets of our own cities.
We have failed to identify the enemy. And until we do, we can never win.“
“Muslims kill more Muslims than they do other people!’ That was an actual argument about why we shouldn’t be so afraid of Muslims.
Identifying the enemy is going to be difficult when such–well educated in this case–people vote.
It used to be said of Viet Nam, and it should be said of Israel, that the good guys are only allowed to, using a boxing metaphor, strike the other guy’s forearms.
Or the Other Side uses, and uses up, less than the interest on their principle, the latter being money, resources, and supply of young men.
It took the Spanish seven hundred and fifty years, but they got the job done.
I wonder if the WW II model is too much in our unconscious. That is, smash the enemy flat, sit on him, root out his big shots and kill them, remake his culture from dog catcher on up. If we’re not willing to do that, it’s because the threat is minimal. And since we’re not willing to do that wrt Islam, it must mean the threat is minimal.
If anyone were interested, some of the Epistles are written to congregations in what is now Turkey.
But…..I’m reminded of a line from Back to The Future: “Is anybody home?”
Especially relevant to read this while sitting on my patio here in Israel.
Let’s recall that this defeatism is purposely cultivated by the Left.
For those of you who view Israel as somehow clearer in these matters than the rest of the world – that clarity has been forced on us by events. And Israel’s cultural/media elite are still desperately trying to keep the truth at bay.
From the beginning, the Lefties who hijacked the Zionist project espoused Leftie one-world universal kumbaya talking points. They have learned nothing in the intervening years.
In 1967 these folks snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They have spent the time since cultivating a false Palestinian identity as a sort of poison pill that will prevent Israel from ever decisively winning the 6 day war. After all these are the people who “never let a crisis go to waste” and constantly play divide and conquer.
The defeatist left wing media here spun the Yom Kippur war in exactly these terms – the song that they made most prominent was one in which a father promises his child that “this will be the last war”.
Years later a younger singer would fling this promise back at the older generation with a taunting song about how “you promised us doves”. Also got lotsa airplay.
Similarly, the Lebanon war was cast by the media as Israel’s Vietnam, and veterans were for the first time disrespected by the media.
The Left is constantly pumping this defeatist poison here as in all Western countries.
The “endless wars” angle was a major part of the pro Oslo propaganda campaign. And many Israelis – good hearted descendants of Tevye and other dreamers – went along.
Then the buses start blowing up.
Any clarity we Israelis have in these matters was paid for in blood – a price i don’t wish on anyone. And the fantasy PC thinking still permeates media, government, and military. As we see in the impotent periodic “incursions” into Gaza, and the Euro-style blind spot to anti-Israel violence from Israel’s Arab citizens.
Muslims are designated Victims making it hard to ridicule the ridiculous parts of the religion. In a civilized society the requirement to kill apostates is ridiculous. IMO it is the easiest part of Islam to ridicule, and widespread ridicule would be very beneficial to humankind.
Young Muslims born in western countries believe they are victims. This belief is incredibly toxic. Unfortunately the Identity politics as practiced by the left reinforces these beliefs. When combined with the belief that death as a martyr is the only sure path to paradise we have a real problem.
The declarations that Islam is a religion of peace might be effective if the non-peace parts of Islam were ridiculed, but otherwise accomplishes nothing.
Ridicule of ridiculous ideas is the only way anything will change.
The debate between VDH and McMaster was interesting. Both made good points. McMaster is right that this war is a long range effort and we have to recognize it and gage our efforts accordingly. In all cases we must be clear eyed about what we can accomplish and the cost benefit of what we want to do. In Afghanistan we let concerns about improving Afghani people’s lives(education for women, gender studies, building roads/dams/irrigation systems/etc.) overtake our true goal of keeping the Taliban and other jihadi organizations from controlling Afghanistan and to maintain an outpost for counter terror intel and interdiction operations.
So, after $2 trillion and many lives and limbs being expended there, we are OUT and the situation is worse than when we went in 20 years ago. We have armed the Taliban, we have lost face, and we have no over the horizon intel capability there. (In spite of Biden’s claims to the contrary.)
We must admit that this is going to be a long, low level, fourth generation war. We must always keep a clear eyed view of what we can accomplish at the lowest possible cost in blood and treasure. This must be clearly explained to the American people because, as VDH pointed out, the patriotic Americans whose sons and daughters have been the backbone of our forces are not seeing the sense in these never-ending low level conflicts in countries they aren’t able to feel any sympathy for. If our leaders won’t /can’t provide answers for the people, the volunteer military is going to suffer from a lack of volunteers.
Another point that I think needs to be brought forward is the issue of unlawful combatants. The Islamic jihadis are unlawful combatants under the Geneva Conventions. They wear no uniforms, carry no flags, don’t represent a sovereign nation, and don’t conduct their operations in accordance with the laws of war. Under the Geneva Convention, if they are captured, they can be tried by a military commission and executed for their crime of being an unlawful combatant. Harsh? Yes, but we are seeking to deter terrorist actions. This is one tool we have not used.
If jihad represents an existential threat to Western civilization, we certainly have not responded as though it does. Instead we responded with bureaucracy, lucrative contracts, and gender studies.
I’m not persuaded about the existential threat; it has been that in the past 500 years, but I’m not seeing it today. It’s because we have much more capability. We have less will, sure. We are not a war-loving people any more than we are a murder-loving people, and so we are at a disadvantage there and always will be, but we have dealt with civilizational threats before when they were unmistakable.
“If our leaders won’t /can’t provide answers for the people, the volunteer military is going to suffer from a lack of volunteers.”
Well, that’s one way to bring back the draft, isn’t it?…
(Never, ever believe that the b*$@tards aren’t effing clever…. Though one might be forgiven if one were to hope and pray that they be too clever by half.)
Here is the audio (mp3) version of the V. D. Hanson and McMaster conversation download link:
https://www.podbean.com/site/EpisodeDownload/PB10E56E3VSB8J
Dick Illyes on September 23, 2021 at 9:05 am
“In a civilized society the requirement to kill apostates is ridiculous. IMO it is the easiest part of Islam to ridicule, and widespread ridicule would be very beneficial to humankind.
Young Muslims born in western countries believe they are victims. … When combined with the belief that death as a martyr is the only sure path to paradise we have a real problem.”
I agree whole heartedly with you here – ridicule can prove a powerful counter force – perhaps as part of a 5th generation war, because we clearly need some new thinking. [see J.J. on September 23, 2021 at 4:21 pm].
Greenfield from Zaphod’s link above: “The Jihadists haven’t made one final mistake yet, but history suggests that they will. …
America, to its friends and enemies, and to its own patriots, can be an infuriating mix of weakness and strength, idealism and corruption, division and unity. And it’s never entirely clear, even to us, when the tipping point that turns one into the other will unexpectedly arrive.”
If we come to the right tipping point, GB’s vision will become reality for enemies both foreign and domestic.
@R2L:
I’m a big fan of Victor Davis Hanson’s Western Way of War. He points out that once we get finally get going, we are complete and utter meat-grinding mechanized murderers.
Where I think GB goes a bit wrong is this notion that at some point the Angels of Mons are going to magically manifest themselves and suddenly the Arsenal of Democracy (no comment) will be excreting Liberty Ships and Fifth Generation Fighter aircraft at 1 Billion grifting dollars per SKU like me after a trip to a Bombay curry house.
Sorry, GB: Putting words into your mouth is now a recognized Olympic event inside my muddled head and I’m going for Gold 😀
My issue is that maybe the Saxon will Awaken in a Very Bad Mood. But what’s he going to fight his foreign enemies with? A wet noodle? He’s got a bunch of impressive looking military kit, but he’s got very little industrial base and a gigantic Fifth Column inside his borders and inside his head courtesy of social media, Hollywood, etc. Knock out a few of his high tech toys and he can’t replace them before he’s beaten or forced to a draw. It’s not 1943. Kaiser is am HMO now. Perhaps they could prescribe enough insulin pumps to bomb the Chinese. Except that they probably buy their pumps from China in bulk.
I’m more into tipping points for Enemies Domestic. That can be done with rocks and and clubs if necessary. Clean House and rebuild. You never know.. after doing so, the urge to go out and smite foreigners might even not exist for a while. I seriously believe that a lot of the lashing out that US Elites do is because it’s easier and more profitable than dealing with domestic stuff.