V.D.H.: OUR STRATEGY v THE ENEMIES' STRATEGY

Do We Have a Strategy in the War?
Yes, and a multifaceted one, at that.
By Victor Davis Hanson

Against the terrorists, our strategy is a six-pronged approach:

1. Beef up security to such a degree at home that it would require far more training and expertise to penetrate our defenses than what was necessary for the September 11 attacks;

2. Arrest, imprison, and kill enough Islamic terrorists in the United States and abroad to make it nearly impossible for them to carry off another September 11-like attack;

3. Take out the worst authoritarian regimes in the Middle East that sponsored terrorism and attacked their neighbors, while pressuring others like a Saudi Arabia and Egypt to cease funding terrorists;

4. Support the creation of democracies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon to offer Muslims choices other than autocracy or Islamic radicalism, while trying to encourage reform in the Middle East at large;

5. Wage a worldwide war of ideas that frames the struggle as the freedom of the individual, liberal values, and Western economic prosperity against the Dark-Age nihilism of the world of the caliphate and Sharia law;

6. Hope that while our enemies’ world is static, ours is not. In other words, while they endlessly redefine the 7th century, we use reason and science to wean us off dependency on their oil, seek sophisticated missile-defense systems, and hope instant global communications (which also facilitate their televised beheadings) can undermine their entire hierarchical society of imams and patriarchs.

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But what of our enemies’ present strategy?

Since they cannot defeat Western forces directly, nor offer anyone the prosperity or freedom of the West, they have been reduced to essentially two approaches: first, on the frontlines, make life miserable for all Muslim civilians and third parties to this war, so that, in their exasperation, our newfound democratic friends in Kabul and Baghdad might ask us to give up, and leave things as they once were before the latest round of violence.

Second, recycle the arguments of global critics to demoralize the Western public into thinking that their own governments are worse than the radical Islamists, and hence they should quit the struggle.

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our enemies likewise see a war of ideas. In the infomercials of bin Laden and Zawahiri, as well as other Islamists who use the Middle East media, both the Arab and Western world are reminded of America’s sins. And our errors are not just fighting Muslims in Afghanistan or Iraq, or supporting Israel, but include, according to the al Qaeda communiqués, everything from not signing the Kyoto accords to the lack of campaign finance reform, East Timor, the Patriot Act, Halliburton, and the usual generic charges of racism and imperialism.

That these ostensibly leftist critiques are mouthed by Middle East fascists, and are made from the shamelessly recycled material of a Michael Moore or a Noam Chomsky, matters little, since the aim is not really conversion of Westerners to Islam, but an insidious weakening of the Western spirit of resistance.

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So the uncertainty is not whether the United States has a sound strategy in this long struggle against savage enemies of the Dark Ages — we have many wise ones — but rather whether we still have the will or the desire to see the war through to the bitter end.

Pertinent Links:

1) Do We Have a Strategy in the War?