|
 merica
this week faces the subtlest of threats. The apparent ease of its
victory in Afghanistan may restore the false sense of invulnerability
that pervaded the nation until the hijacked planes crashed into
the World Trade Center. If in addition Osama bin Laden is captured,
killed, or credibly reported to have perished in his upholstered
cave, then Americans may conclude that the war on terrorism has
been won and that normalcy, shopping, a feckless foreign policy,
multiculturalism, insecure borders, and MTV can resume as before.
If that happens,
it will not signify that the war against terrorism is over —
merely that we have stopped fighting it. Consider how much will
not have been changed by the fall of Kandahar and the deaths of
bin Laden and Mullah Omar. An estimated 35,000 members of the al
Qaeda network will remain at large. Wealthy Saudis and others in
the Gulf will continue to finance anti-American fanaticism in religious
schools, radical mosques, and terrorist training camps across the
Muslim world. Millions of young Muslim men, growing up in societies
that cannot provide work for their rapidly growing numbers, will
yearn to avenge bin Laden; and several Muslim regimes will continue
to harbor, assist, and train al Qaeda.
For the inconvenient
fact is that Osama bin Laden and his brand of radical Islam represent
a mass movement in the Arab world. It will be finally eradicated
when more tolerant and realistic forms of Islam decisively defeat
it within Islam, just as liberal democratic Christian humanism defeated
Nazism and Communism within the West.
But because
radical Islamism is an "armed doctrine," in Burke's phrase,
it must first be defeated on the battlefield. Only such a defeat
will open the minds and hearts of all Muslims to alternatives within
Islam. That defeat can be accomplished only by the U.S. and its
allies — including, ideally, some inevitably nervous Muslim
allies.
Hence the furious
discussion, inside and outside the U.S. government, of overthrowing
Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Admittedly, that will not necessarily be
the next step in America's war on terrorism. There is a reasonable
argument that once Afghanistan has been secured, the U.S. should
take on "softer" terrorist targets such as the Islamic
terrorist enclaves in the Philippines.
But Saddam's
arsenal of mass destruction is growing more formidable daily. And
we know enough of his intense personal pride and ruthlessness to
suspect that he would prefer to douse the Middle East in flames
rather than yield to any member of the Bush family. Within the next
two years, therefore, we must either overthrow Saddam or risk both
his obtaining nuclear invulnerability and financing a string of
terrorist successes.
Writing in
the current National Interest, former Defense Secretary and
CIA Director James Schlesinger lists the real difficulties of mounting
an invasion of Iraq. It would require land bases which even loyal
U.S. allies like Turkey might be reluctant to provide; and it might
weaken moderate Muslim regimes before the radical ones and thus
undermine America's strategic position in the Middle East. These
are formidable objections. Schlesinger raises them to point the
firm moral that if any such action is attempted, it must be absolutely
assured of success. There can be no Bay of Pigs.
Even if the
U.S. employs Iraqi opposition forces against Saddam as it has successfully
employed the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, it must be ready
to supplement these forces with its own overwhelming might at the
first sign that Saddam's soldiers are holding their ground. America's
soldiers must be in the region in sufficient numbers to roll over
Saddam — along with utterly reliable allies like the Brits,
the Aussies and the Turks. More nervous allies from the Muslim world
should be held back for the victory parade.
Their presence
there, however, will be vital. For, aside from battlefield valor,
two types of morale will finally win the war on terrorism. The first
is the fragility of totalitarian regimes like Saddam's Baath Socialist
regime that govern by fear. As soon as U.S. or allied tanks are
seen on the outskirts of Baghdad, its rejoicing will equal that
of Kabul.
The second
factor is the infectious intoxication of success. After all, Muslim
countries have been susceptible to the appeal of radical Islam in
part because their recent history has been one of humiliating failure
while the West has prospered.
Once Saddam
and bin Laden perish, their ideologies will join earlier failures
like Nasserism, as roads to nowhere. So Muslims should be among
the victorious being cheered — and not only soldiers in the
parade but also Muslim statesmen, writers, businessmen and clerics
who together must pioneer a liberal Islam which enables Muslims
first to prosper and then to govern themselves democratically as
full members of the modern world.
Which means
that the West, instead of simply clinging to despotic regimes because
they are convenient, must help the Muslim world toward a more liberal
and, eventually, democratic future.
|
