Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (No Series) (38 page)

As you know, Brothers, God told our beloved Prophet, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him, that He will only help those who do everything possible to help themselves, and so we must continue to carry this war to the Americans while they remain asleep. Our strategy must continue to be, as the Prophet, God’s peace and blessings be upon him, said to Satan, “I will give thee no respite.”
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22. And my final prayer is that all praise is due Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may His peace and blessings be on our master Muhammad and upon his family and companions. And, Brothers, may Allah’s peace and blessing be upon you.

Americans should take Patrick Henry’s advice and accept the anguish of seeing that the United States stands at a uniquely dire moment in its history; indeed, America stands at a moment that may be unique in terms of the history of any Great Power that has ever existed. If tomorrow the fighters of al-Qaeda or another Islamist insurgent group detonate a nuclear device in an American city—or cities, given al-Qaeda’s predilection for multiple, simultaneous attacks—the U.S. government would find itself with an unprecedented national emergency, stunning numbers of dead, besieged by a population rabid for revenge, and having no meaningful military or political target against which to unleash the earth’s most powerful military. Washington might temporarily dodge this reality by pulverizing Iran, which would have had nothing to do with the attack, or by destroying a Muslim holy site, such as Mecca or Medina. The sole U.S. option of irrational military retaliation, in itself, speaks eloquently about the effective strategy of our Islamist foes and the degree to which American leaders have played into their hands. But when the smoke from those retaliatory attacks cleared, the American governing elite would have rallied even more of the Muslim world to the support of the nuclear attackers and would find itself detested and untrusted by American citizens. On that day U.S. political leaders would be as bankrupt in terms of domestic support and empathy as they are today in terms of intellectual capacity and common sense.

While there has been an abundance of recommendations about how to service this uniquely dangerous moment in U.S. history, most have been predictable—and useless—manifestations of a continuing Cold War–era worldview. Politicians, pundits, and generals of all persuasions, as discussed throughout this book, stick to the good-vs.-evil scenario: “The Islamists hate us for our liberties and freedoms, not for what we do, and we will bring them to justice one man at a time.” From academics and think-tank denizens come such gems as: we “must work with moderate and liberal Muslims to prevent extremists from taking over mosques”
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; “it is necessary to establish an anti-defamation league to monitor such [Islamist] hate speech…Anti-American or anti-Western hate speech is unacceptable”
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and “we must divorce the Islamist mujahedin from their faith by calling them proponents of ‘Arab Fascism.’”
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From the same sources come such enemy-intimidating ideas as “stigmatize the extremists and their war” by changing the war on terror to “‘the war on jihadis’ and ‘the war on jihadism’”
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“demonstrate our commitment to the rule of law”
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and, “replace the language of warfare…with the language of development and construction and the patience that goes along with it.”
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Having prepared America to triumph semantically, most policy recommendations then default to the Cold War gold standard: American intervention everywhere. The U.S. government “will resist any and all efforts to establish governments on these [Islamist] principles anywhere in the world,” and while doing this, Washington and its allies must “find ways to promote orderly and peaceful development.”
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How do we do the latter? With money from U.S. taxpayers of course! Washington’s contributions after an Arab-Israeli settlement must be a “substantial, conspicuous, and inspiring sum,”
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and U.S. government funds should be used “to support the development [in the Muslim world] of a resilient civil society and moderate opposition political parties.”
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Also needed, naturally, are more U.S. funds for participation in “global governance,” new multilateral institutions, the “restructuring and reform of the UN,” and America’s role as the “guarantor” of “human dignity.”
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And finally the crowning touch, one that surely demonstrates the homogeneity of the U.S. governing elite from far right to far left. For all the hatred that most academic and think tankers direct at the neoconservatives, their post-9/11 policy recommendations reflect just as great a willingness to intervene and go democracy-crusading, albeit with dollars and do-gooders rather than guns. “Only democratization,” wrote one academic who would surely be appalled to be put in the neoconservative camp, “will directly attack the jihadist ideology while creating governments that are more responsive to their citizens.”
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Another writes that the “U.S. government must show strong support for such a [anti–hate speech] program to support universal tolerance and peace.”
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And yet another, a just-war scholar apparently intent on involving her countrymen in just about every war possible, writes, “As the world’s superpower, America bears the responsibility to help guarantee that international stability, whether much of the world wants it or not.”
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Generally absent from most of these recommendations is any notion that there should be substantive changes in U.S. foreign policy; that America should start looking out for itself first and foremost; or that, heaven forbid, the level of U.S. military power applied against our Islamist enemies must be massively increased. To be sure, very few of America’s elite have signed on to the timeless wisdom of the motto of the
National Review
’s John Derbyshire: “Rubble Doesn’t Cause Trouble.”
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Indeed, the whole elite seems to hold a sneaking suspicion that it really does not have a clue about how to defeat bin Laden et al. “We are going to have to learn to live with it [terrorism],” concludes one academic musing from Radcliffe and Harvard, “as the price of living in a complex world.”
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Which only goes to show that, sadly, the Cold War’s devotees of nuance, as well as its masters of the international political ballet, are still with us and are prepared to see untold numbers of Americans die rather than consider anything so gauche as using Reagan’s we win–they lose formula to bring victory over the Islamists.

Given the quality of the foregoing advice—it is what Patrick Henry called “the song of the syren”—there clearly is no certainty that a nuclear calamity can be prevented. Americans must begin to do the thinking that their elites have proved themselves incapable of doing. Foreign policy must be changed to focus only on genuine national-security interests; nonessential political, diplomatic, and military intervention abroad must be stopped; and when the use of military force is mandatory, it must be applied with more ferocity and less discrimination. Domestically, homeland security must become a reality and not just a catchphrase used to justify enormous, nonproductive federal expenditures. And finally, a beginning must be made to return the American political system to the framework of responsible republican government crafted by the Founders. The people themselves must become the engines of their own and their country’s survival. And time is running short for them to do so. They must examine their history afresh; relearn its lessons to know where they came from, where they are, and where they are going; and prepare to confront and defeat some of the most dangerous foes their republic has faced. “To see what others have done in important junctures, and to have both their merits and mistakes analyzed by a competent critic,” wrote a talented citizen-soldier in Mr. Lincoln’s armies in words pertinent to the need of today’s Americans to act in their country’s defense,

Writing in the 1780s, Great Britain’s King George III squarely faced up to the fact that the British military had been defeated by George Washington’s army and that Britain’s thirteen English-speaking North American colonies were irretrievably lost to his realm. “America is lost,” George III wrote, then went on to survey what was to come next. “Must we fall beneath the blow? Or have we resources that may repair the mischief? What are those resources? Should they be sought in distant Regiouns [
sic
] held by precarious tenure, or should we seek them at home in exertions of a new policy?”
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Ironically, the leaders of the nation established by General Washington’s victory today find themselves in much the same position as George III. They have lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and must now disengage from them with as much decorum as possible. The longer they wait, the more difficult it will be to prevent a Saigon-like exit. For Americans generally, the unavoidable conclusion is that their political leaders have bitten off overseas far more than the country can ever reasonably hope to chew. Americans and their leaders will henceforth have to decide, as did George III and his ministers, whether to continue adventuring about “in distant Regiouns,” or seek to find national security “at home in exertions of a new policy.”

The bottom line for America is that the war against bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and their allies was and is one that we must fight. As Abdel Bari Atwan has written, “We ignore al-Qaeda at our own risk. It is not going to go away.”
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We are, however, in the entirely enviable position of being able to decide how big a war we need to fight, and we can choose, once we evacuate Iraq and Afghanistan, where we need to fight it. As I have written previously, the United States is not the main enemy of bin Laden and other Islamists, and while this reality may dent our collective sense of self-importance, it is the beginning of wisdom. America is simply in the way of Islamist forces and so prevents the attainment of their goals in the Islamic world; that is, to destroy the family-owned and U.S.-supported Muslim tyrannies that have ruled the region since 1945 and to destroy Israel. This is, of course, serious business, but it is America’s business only to the extent that Washington allows it to be, and that extent will be determined by whether or not the U.S. government maintains the status quo of its policies toward the Muslim world, energy supplies, and Israel. Since 9/11 the Bush administration, all of Congress, and the country’s bipartisan governing elite have behaved as if the threats to the Muslim tyrannies and Israel were equally threats to the United States and its citizens. What this means is that U.S. leaders have decided to forgo fighting a necessary but limited war in favor of fighting a worldwide and very likely unending war, one that holds every possibility of causing Americans to live a lifestyle shaped by war and their enemies’ actions, and not by their traditions, preferences, and aspirations.

What Is in Pandora’s Box?

To use James Madison’s metaphor, Osama bin Laden and the forces he leads and inspires have long held Pandora’s box open so U.S. leaders could examine its contents. They do not like what they see, however, because from the box are flowing woes for America that derive from the cumulative impact of thirty years of their counterproductive foreign policies. The U.S. governing elite has allowed—indeed, it has promoted—the steady development of a situation in which the energy resources upon which the U.S. economy depends are controlled by foreigners, among whom are Muslim leaders and regimes that regard our culture, political system, and dominant faith with contempt; work actively to spread a violent, anti-American brand of Islam in the United States and the societies of our European allies; and no longer believe that U.S. military power merits respect. Our immense and growing federal deficit is increasingly held by China and Saudi Arabia, the first a nation that appears headed to become America’s main economic rival, and the latter, already our energy master, a nation that funds the worldwide spread of a faith that encourages the acceptance of bin Laden’s message and therefore runs directly counter to U.S. national-security interests. In addition, our elite has put the United States in the addle-brained position of backing both sides in a vicious religious war between Israelis and Arabs, thereby making us part of an endless war in which we have nothing at stake but the emotions, religious affiliation, and divided loyalties of two small segments of our population.

Because of our governing elites’ willful blindness to this reality, the most important decision that can be made by an independent people, the decision of peace or war, is drifting ever further from American hands. Unexpected and disruptive fighting in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province or in the Niger Delta would, for example, prompt the large-scale deployment of U.S. military forces to restore reliable pumping, processing, and export in one or both locations. The U.S. president and Congress of the day would publicly go through a set of rushed “high-level deliberations,” quickly “consult with allies,” and then would roll out full-blown Cold War rhetoric and lie to Americans that “freedom is threatened” and “aggression must be crushed.” It will sound like that old-time religion and might temporarily rally Americans. But it all will be play-acting: America would be on the way to war because of Washington’s decades-old, near-criminal negligence regarding energy policy.

Likewise, U.S. participation in future Middle East wars is now virtually automatic; as the bipartisan Iraq Study Group Report recently declared: “No American administration—Democratic or Republican—will ever abandon Israel.”
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Written by a group of unelected Cold Warriors, the report thereby definitively formulated the long-unstated reality that Washington has surrendered control over the decision for war or peace in the Middle East to Israel’s government of the day or any Muslim regime that chooses to attack Israel. In sum, the U.S. governing elite’s longtime use of blithe, best-case-scenario operating assumptions—i.e., the market will ensure adequate supplies of inexpensive oil, and the Arab-Israeli peace process will succeed—has vitiated the Founders’ careful, checks-and-balances-laden delineation of the process by which the United States would go to war, a process meant to leave that decision in the hands of the elected members of the U.S. Congress, not to the president, and certainly not to foreigners seeking our wealth and military protection. But in many cases it is foreigners who will decide when the United States goes to war, and to add insult to injury, today’s political environment tends to label Americans who object to this reality as less than loyal.

This situation also highlights what today may be the most important and potentially destructive class division existing in U.S. society. U.S. politicians, the media, and our governing elite generally spend a great deal of time, talk, and ink describing black-vs.-white, rich-vs.-poor, educated-vs.-less-educated, old-vs.-young, and English-speaking-vs.-non-English-speaking divisions in American society. Such divisions undeniably exist and need focused, consistent, and sustained remedial attention, especially in the current environment in which Washington’s refusal to enforce federal immigration and border-control laws sharpens many of the just-noted societal divisions. But the greatest and most dangerous divide in American society is between our governing elites—political, economic, military, and media—and the great bulk of workaday Americans on the issues of foreign policy and war. Nonelite Americans are slowly coming to confront a reality in which those who govern them are eager to be “citizens of the world” and are more concerned with affairs outside the United States then they are with fixing such daunting domestic problems as illegal immigration and funding for Social Security. Even leading private-sector Americans do not seem immune from this aspiration. With so much to do in furthering equity, health care, and basic infrastructure rehabilitation, our leading and richest citizens prefer to donate their excess funds to foreign endeavors. Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Warren Buffett, and others have adopted an America-second attitude and are engaged in large, high-profile, and Davos-pleasing donations outside the country that nurtures, protects, and awards them breathtaking tax deductions. And now Bill Clinton, the ultimate European-wannabe ringmaster for this circus of aspiring world citizens, is strutting about the world seeking donations for humanitarian activities outside America. Even President Bush’s multibillion-dollar plan to combat HIV-AIDS in Africa seems an oddly ranked priority when the District of Columbia has an AIDS problem worse than some countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The most dangerous aspect of the division between the domestic focus of Americans and the international fixation of their elite, however, lies in the elite’s easy willingness to sacrifice the lives of the former’s sons and daughters in wars meant to install freedom and democracy in the Islamic world. These men and women have consciously made the decision that they will steadily spend the lives of our children to bring democracy, women’s rights, parliamentary government, human rights, and secularism to those who want no part of any of them in the Westernized form that is offered. And even if they did want them, it is no part of the U.S. government’s responsibility or constitutional writ to spend the lives and treasure of Americans to satisfy the desires of foreigners.

What we are seeing today in Afghanistan is a perfect example of the willingness of U.S. leaders to spend the lives of America’s young for patently unobtainable goals, and why it is our elite—and not the Islamists—who can be accurately characterized as Madison’s disguised serpent creeping into our paradise in North America. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan was to kill Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and as many of their lieutenants, foot soldiers, and Mullah Omar’s Taliban as possible. Our mission was strictly military in nature, accomplishable given the immense power of the U.S. military, and needing to be done quickly and in a way that would leave behind enough smoldering physical wreckage and high enough piles of corpses to (a) make future Afghan regimes think twice about hosting America’s enemies and (b) leave the clear idea in the minds of all Muslims that they can think and say what they will of the United States, but the cost of actually killing or helping to kill Americans is horrendous.

This limited and doable task was never given a thought, however, as our bipartisan governing elite blithely ignored the absolute need for a thorough, north-to-south military flaying of our Islamist enemies in Afghanistan and instead undertook a project to build an America-like democracy in the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the deserts of Khandahar. Instead of our soldiers and Marines fighting, being maimed, and dying to eliminate the threat to America, they are doing so to make sure Afghans can vote—whether they want to or not, or even understand what they are doing—and so that a defined portion of the Afghan parliament is reserved for female Afghan parliamentarians. In other words, the lives of our military-children are being sacrificed so that U.S. leaders can bleat and preen in international conferences about the pride they take in bringing democracy and freedom to Afghanistan’s unwashed Muslim masses. In the era of the all-volunteer military, of course, precious few U.S. leaders have any children serving in the military. It is at least a point of curiosity to wonder how today’s gold-star mothers can bear to have lost a son or daughter to sate the democracy-mongering of the U.S. governing elite. Knowing, in years past, that a son or daughter perished to help protect America from the genuine national security threats posed by Nazism, Japanese barbarism, or Bolshevism would have been difficult enough. It would take an odd mindset indeed for any parent to be able to take comfort in knowing their child was killed so Mrs. Muhammad can vote, vamp, and abort.

Iraq is another case of the U.S. governing elite embarking on a look-how-great-we-are exercise designed to bring secular democracy to Muslims, the blood-and-treasure bill to be paid, as always, by Americans whose leaders care not a whit about protecting them or their children. As noted in Chapter 4, Saddam Hussein and Bashir al-Assad were strong, ruthless, and reliable de facto U.S. allies in the war against Sunni Islamist militancy. They were the cork in the bottle’s neck that prevented the easy westward flow of Islamist fighters from South Asia to the Levant, Turkey, Europe, and the Arabian Peninsula. Neither regime needed convincing, arms, or funding from the United States to resist and persecute the Islamists; as is almost always the case, regimes that are scared to death for their survival—as were those of Saddam and al-Assad—make the best allies. Faced with the chance to use this cost-free bulwark, the Bush administration and Congress destroyed it in the name of trying to outdo Woodrow Wilson, a human scourge who is not often enough ranked with the twentieth century’s top bloodletters. Unsatisfied with simply annihilating al-Qaeda, the one foe who could attack in the United States, the Bush team embarked on a second, democracy-crusading mission that showed them to be ignorant not only of the Muslim world but of how long it has taken to develop a functioning, equitable republican society in their own country. They scored what may well be a singular historical achievement: they were strangers in a strange land both at home and abroad. And now the American people are paying for it, and their children face a decade or more of fighting the current and, most assuredly, future wars that the Bush administration and Congress are destined to leave behind.

Time to Play Rough

Recommendations for how to conduct the U.S. struggle against the Islamist threat have ranged, as we saw at the start of this section, from the Cold War standard (America must intervene abroad so “that democratic civil society can be built or rebuilt”
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) to the simply insipid (America must “isolate the terrorists and inoculate their potential recruits from them”
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). Is there a doctor in the house? Clearly, such thinking lines each side of the road to perdition. But give the devil his due—to resurrect the durable manliness that Churchill claimed brought us safely through the travail of centuries will not be easy. Everything that needs to be done at home and abroad is hard, painful, and fraught with danger, but thanks to God—as our Islamist enemies would say—all that needs doing is in our own hands to do. We need no other country’s indulgence or resources to rectify the dilemmas of our own manufacturing, but we do need what we have sorely lacked for the last three presidencies, leaders with courage, determination, common sense, bloodymindedness, and a fiercely America-first orientation. When these leaders emerge, and American history gives us hope they can, they must make the home front job one. Until the continental United States is secured to the greatest extent possible in the three areas discussed below, it can do nothing overseas beyond the current and bloody attempt to avoid defeats that are too obvious.