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We have incurred legitimate hatred from the radical Islamic states.
Nothing could be further from truth. The Taliban, the mullahs in
Iran, and other assorted fundamentalists despise the United States
for its culture and envy it for its power. The wealth, technology,
and freedom of America's global culture — from bare navels
to the Internet — have challenged fundamentalists, who are
wedded to a medieval world of perpetual stasis. That terrorists
use frequent-flyer miles and cell phones to kill us only sharpens
that paradox, and accentuates their dual sentiments of envy and
inadequacy. For the record, in the last ten years, the United States
freed the Arab and Islamic state of Kuwait, opposed Saddam Hussein
and his murder of Islamic Kurds and Shiites, prevented Muslim Afghanistan
from becoming a Soviet satrapy, and saved the Muslims of Bosnia
and Kosovo from extinction — as European and "moderate"
Arab states watched the carnage of their neighbors and kin. The
majority of the terrorists that surround bin Laden are from the
upper and middle classes of Arab society, are highly educated, and
are driven to murder by hatred and envy, not hunger or exploitation.
They are a world apart from the starving in South America and Africa,
who do not crash airliners into office towers. These terrorists
hate us for who we are, not what we have done.
2.
The Arab and Muslim worlds are formidable.
In fact, despite being over a billion strong, they are not monolithic
and are at their weakest since the 15th or 16th century. There is
not a single Arab democracy, nor one truly free populace. Like the
Ottomans of the past, who made poor copies of Venetian cannon, so
too the fundamentalists are parasitic upon Western culture, their
societies unable to mass-produce, or even create, a single one of
the weapons they employ. The economies of the larger Muslim world
— from Indonesia and Iran to Lebanon and Palestine — are
in shambles, ruined by either autocracy or theocracy. Moreover,
new coalitions are emerging that will only further isolate Muslim
states, in which even mainstream clerics and intellectuals have
not successfully reconciled the unfettered dynamism of global capitalism
and technology with the doctrines of the Koran. In response, the
United States will gradually gravitate toward tough nuclear powers
like Russia and India, whose secular democracies have long-standing
affinities with the West — and deep enmity toward Islamic fundamentalism.
3.
The moderate Arab countries are our friends.
We also need to revisit the myth of the "moderate" Arab
countries. Most are moderate in only a relative sense, the way an
opportunist like Franco was a moderate fascist in comparison to
Hitler, or a wily Tito a moderate Communist as opposed to Stalin.
We must accept the bitter truth that states like Palestine, Egypt,
Syria, and others — despite American deference and occasional
aid — are not our friends, much less our allies. Their citizens
do not vote freely; their media is controlled and censored; women
are not fully liberated, if at all; and they are growing less, not
more, tolerant of religious and cultural diversity. While the United
States should not gratuitously incite societies like Jordan (a supporter
of Iraq in the Gulf War), Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, we must reexamine
our relationships with them — from military assistance to foreign
aid to travel and immigration. One of the more frustrating facets
of the American media has been their reluctance (or inability) to
show the grassroots celebration — going on in the streets of
Palestine, Pakistan, Egypt, and other countries — of 6,000
American deaths. We should pay close attention to what the upscale
parents of the terrorists now profess to European journalists: They
may well be representative of Arab "moderates" in Egypt
and Lebanon, and yet, with perfect consistency, either deny their
progeny's involvement, spin myths about CIA conspiracies, or suggest
that the attacks were warranted.
4.
Fundamentalist terrorism cannot be eliminated.
This fear too is erroneous. Terrorist organizations like bin Laden's,
the Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad are not as formidable as either
German Nazism or Japanese militarism, both of which were exterminated
within five years of America going to war and have not plagued the
planet since. The Waffen SS, Gestapo, the Kamikazes, and the Japanese
army at Bataan were all more horrific than the Taliban. Terrorism
is a tumor with tentacles, but these can be excised by frequent
and continued air strikes, coupled with sudden ground incursions
and ongoing counterinsurgency. The hosts can be given a series of
ongoing ultimatums: to surrender suspects, demolish camps, and cease
monetary support — or face the month-by-month, systematic destruction
of their military assets, banks, and communications. Add in financial,
economic, and cultural ostracism, and terrorism can and will be
crushed — if the United States is willing to give treasure
and lives for the greater good and for our children's future.
5.
The crisis is an international problem.
In theory, of course it is, and we should welcome assistance from
our traditional allies and enlist indigenous resistance groups in
Iraq and Afghanistan. But the United States must be prepared to
act alone, especially as casualties mount and terrorist reprisals
increase. Nor should we welcome alliances with past terrorist culprits
that will haunt us later and erode the moral high ground.
The United
Nations is not only as impotent as the old League of Nations, but
lacks the former's idealism and has become ever more morally bankrupt.
Once the fighting starts, despite initial pledges of support, the
Europeans will probably extend words of encouragement but lend no
real material or military assistance of any value. We cannot expect
the French to remember Normandy Beach or the Germans the Berlin
airlift. Indeed, most Europeans have already forgotten American
intervention on their doorstep to stop the recent holocaust in the
Balkans. We should neither lament nor be angered by their hypocrisy,
but rather expect it, and realize what a different country America
is and always has been compared to its European allies. We must
be ready to be lectured by the Swedes who passed on World War II,
ignored by the Swiss who profited from it, and hectored by the French
who nearly lost it. America needs and welcomes friends, but the
absence of such should not deter our response to avenge our own
dead and protect our innocent.
6.
War has never solved anything.
Quite the contrary. The three greatest scourges of the 20th century
— Nazism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism —
were defeated through war or continued military resistance. More
were killed by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao outside of combat than died
in World Wars I and II. War, as Sherman said, is all hell, but as
Heraclitus admitted it is also "the father of us all."
Wickedness — whether chattel slavery, the gas chambers, or
concentration camps — has rarely passed quietly into the night
on its own. The present evil isn't going to either.
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