Islam is wining. That’s pretty much the long and the short of it. The Milchemes Mitzvah which they call Jihad is taking control of the Islamic word. They are getting new converts every day. And Islamism is what’s fueling the conflict in Lebanon. And Gaza. And Iraq. And it is clearly what’s driving Iran. And most importantly it is the primary reason for the hatred of Israel… and Jews… and Christians. We in the west have yet to feel the full consequences of the Jihad, although we had a taste of it on 9/11/01.
Why do I say Islam winning?... Let me count the ways.
Islamist Hezbollah, a surrogate of Iran, controls Lebanon.
The battle between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza is clearly being won by the Islamist Hamas…first by the ballot and now by the bullet. Hamas leaders and members are true and uncompromising believers in the tenet of world domination by Islam by any means necessary.
Iraq, while a mostly civil war type conflict can really be seen as more of a conflict between the more secular and the more religious Islamist. And the Islamists are winning there, because they have no fear. Dying for the cause is a prized achievement.
And the grand-daddy of them all is Iran. Thanks in large part to the grossly incompetent former President Jimmy Carter 27 years ago, Islamist adherents of Ayatollah Khomeini took over what used to be a very pro-western secular country. And it has remained in power raising an entire generation of Islamic fundamentalists. How sad it is when I recall how pro west it was prior to the Islamic revolution. It even had ambassadorial exchanges with Israel.
Iran is the real enemy here. They are the ones driving this entire conflict. They are the inspiration and the enablers of most of the terrorism taking place against the west. They invented the modern day Jihadist fighter…fighters that include car bombers and suicide bombers. They encourage it. They preach it as a virtue. They fund it. They train people in how to do it effectively. And now of course they are on the precipice of becoming a nuclear power.
Last Sunday, I watched an interview of Senator Joseph Lieberman. For the first time I finally heard a respected politician talk about a solution I’ve been advocating for a long time: Military action against Iran.
I’m not sure how the US would go about it. I am sure about the opposition to it by most of the rest of the world and even the US congress. But I am equally sure he is right about where the problem truly lies and he is at least beginning to address the real problem.
The real problem is Islam itself.
No matter how many so called peaceful Islamic types say that it Islam is a religion of peace… and that it is the fanatics who misinterpret and misrepresent Islam… and that it is they who are causing all the problems… and that they are but a small minority… it doesn’t matter. They can scream it all they want. The only Islam that matters is the one that is winning the Jihad.
So how do we win this war? Well first we have to understand that this is not a war against terrorism. Terror is just a tactic, not an enemy. The enemy is an idea: Islam.
How do you defeat an idea? This is one area that our political leaders have not faced realistically. They think that if we can establish a democratic bulwark in Iraq, everything will just fall into place. Iraq will become a shining example in the region of how wonderfully a democracy can work.
But that kind of thinking is why Iraq is in the mess that it’s in. You cannot win a war against an idea by killing, capturing, or even torturing a few of its adherents. You have to win a war of ideas by destroying the idea itself …which is truly impossible if you think about it.
So, what can we do if an idea cannot be destroyed? Well you don’t destroy it entirely. But depending on the idea, it can be dimished to the point where winning a war based on it becomes impossible. This is what happened in World War II. Nazi Germany was based on an idea too. It was the racist philosophy of Nazism. Their racial ideas were not entirely destroyed, but once they realized through the overwhelming force of the allied response that their ideas were not going to prevail in the battlefield, they surrendered. And Germany has now become an ally.
But that only works with rational people who value their own lives. Religious fervor adds a dimension that is virtually impossible to fight. The religious fanatic that is the Jihadist doesn’t care if he is losing, or that he will die. Death is a prize when warring for God. Innocent Islamic victims in a Jihad go straight to heaven. Innocent non-Islamic victims go straight to hell.
So how do we fight that? Well it helps if at least those fighting the war understand the enemy and their goals. And that is one reason the war in Iraq will never be won by conventional military means. The US army is the mightiest in the world by far, yet it has been impotent so far.
So long as the Islamist fighters have one man standing they will fight on and continually recruit more. And unless we are willing to commit genocide, a conventional war cannot destroy them. It is a logistical impossibility since they are invisible. We don’t know how many fanatic fighters there are or where they are, or even who they are. They hide in plain sight.
We do, however, know who the clerics are. We know who, what, and where they are. The only way we are going to win the war with Isalm is if we treat this entire word-wide conflict as a holy war. And the new generals in this war are the Islamist clerics. It has to be seen that way. World leaders, starting with the US have to stop tip-toeing around the political correctness of calling Islamist terrorists an aberration of Islam. They aren’t. They are an integral part of the belief system. Islamists are a faction that focuses on that element of Islam. They are almost Messianist in their approach. They view themselves as all powerful because they fear no one and nothing, least of all their own deaths.
So, Senator Lieberman’s suggestion is a good start. Iran, the spiritual guiding light for Islamism needs to be a prime focus. Iraq is at best a surrogate war. We are about four years late in looking at this war as a holy war, a Meilchemes Mitzvah, a Jihad. But late… does not mean too late.
It’s time for the world to buckle down and take care of business. A new strategy has to be developed to fight Islam… not terror. Once we do that, we will be on our way toward victory.
