8 September 2014 -
1300 years of jihad
History should teach us about the present. As a ten-year-old, I was mesmerized by the
accounts of Lewis and Clark’s 1804-06 expedition back and forth across
Montana. The rest of their epic journey
across the continent was largely irrelevant to a boy who viewed Montana alone as
God’s country, the center of the universe.
As I grew, I learned that differing historical beliefs, cultures, and
geography greatly influenced movements of peoples and civilizations. I realized I needed to catch up.
As an Air Force intelligence officer, I analyzed the
relationships among world events and peoples, their geography, religions,
languages, ethnicities, cultures, economies, historical successes and failures,
and immediate aspirations. After
thirty-five years of analytic effort, I came to agree with the truism: “The
more things change, the more they remain the same.”
The “progressive” belief that modern nations will abandon
allegiance to the factors above and embrace a one-world view is fantasy. Modern civilization has given us vaccines,
flush toilets, and a way to check e-mail in a fast-food restaurant in
Singapore. But, it has not changed the
way most people identify with something greater than themselves, pray, or
sacrifice for family and community. And,
modern “progressive” thought has had little success at all in resolving strife
among peoples.
A 1,300-year war is being waged between Christian and
Islamic civilizations. Since the 8th
century, the history of the Middle East and South Asia, almost all of Europe,
and much of Africa, has played itself out in battles between these two sets of
ideology. Of course, within each
civilization there have also been wars among different nations, peoples, and
religious sects. And, even in recent
times, those intra-civilization struggles have been heavily influenced by the
potential intrusion of other civilizations.
The current fighting in Iraq and Syria is a skirmish in the
latest jihadi terrorists’ offensive in this centuries-old war. A resurgent Islam, modernized and enabled by
petrodollars, has taken the initiative in this war between civilizations by
paying for the creation of western-based jihadist networks that are attacking
the Christian West. The new twist now is
that many of those who align themselves with the Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria (ISIS) and the Levant (ISIL) jihadists will return to the western
countries they came from, prepared to attack their countrymen in the name of
radical Islam.
The pool of potential killers is large. Local unrest in, and the withdrawal of
European colonizers from, Islamic regions have created significant Moslem
minorities within the bulwarks of western civilized nations such as Britain,
France, Germany, Canada, and the United States.
It is within these communities that many of the ISIL radicals are being
trained, are operating, and will continue to operate. ISIL is the vanguard of a radical Islamic
enemy spreading to other-than Muslim countries, an enemy that is controlling
the events of today’s war. Western
leaders must now try to blunt this latest enemy campaign originating in jihadist
madrasas and training camps in their own cities.
It is no surprise that we in the West have no solid allies
in the Islamic civilization who will help us regain the initiative in this
war. Saudi Arabia, for example, is
asking the U.S. to help them squelch the latest version of jihad in Iraq; at
the same time it continues to fund the creation of radical jihadists in its
worldwide network of fundamental Wahabbist Islam schools. Iran is allowed to flit in and out of nuclear
negotiations with the U.S., at the same time never denying that it wants to
destroy the United States and Israel, dominate the region, and establish Shia
Islam as the ruling force wherever Moslems live. Even Turkey, a long-neglected U.S. ally, is
fomenting radical Islam. Turks, Arabs,
Persians, and Kurds may all distrust and try to dominate each other, but they
all certainly distrust and often hate the West more. Our strategic enemy is not ISIL; it is the
intolerant civilization that spawns and nurtures violent religious movements
within itself and then selectively launches these movements against the West in
the larger war.
Our leaders must admit that their vision of a let’s-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbaya
world ain’t gonna happen. The world’s
religious and cultural history clearly warns otherwise. Instead, our leaders need to rally western
civilizations around an unambiguous message and a well-defined strategy that
will protect traditional western interests.
The message—the vision—is one of protecting individual
freedom, religious tolerance, the sanctity of the lives and property of
citizens, and the sovereignty of borders.
The strategy is first to destroy ISIL, Al-Queda, and their
fellow henchmen with certainty and decisiveness. The weapons used and the timing and tempo of
the war are operational concerns and do not need to be made public. Then, our leaders must coerce—militarily,
economically, and diplomatically–radical Islamic leaders into stopping their
expansionist campaigns.
Our leaders must regain the initiative in this centuries-old
war, a war that will continue long after they are gone from the scene. They owe that much to the future of our
civilization and the people they are part of.
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