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COMMENTARY
June 4, 2005
Longish view
Forty-five months after the opening stroke of the still misnamed "War on Terror", I wonder where we are. It is because I have been wondering, that I have let that topic slide in the last couple of months. Moreover, I've been shy about repeating points that seem as true to me today as when I first wrote them. But with the prospect of two weeks' leave before me (including travel), some kind of review may now be overdue. I do feel sure, that while the continuing terrorist carnage in Iraq, especially, but also in Afghanistan, must disturb us as conscientious human beings, we have less reason than ever to be alarmed by it. We are witnessing what amounts to the purposeful bleeding of a septic wound, as the most fanatic Islamist incendiaries from within Iraq and abroad take their best, hopeless shot at bringing down the new Iraqi constitutional order. It is a matter of life or death for their cause, and we could hardly expect them to abandon it easily. As the author of the much-mocked "flypaper theory" -- the phrase I used to describe the implicit strategy behind the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan -- I am more and more persuaded it has worked. All ground indications are that large numbers of Islamist terrorists who would otherwise remain dangerously under cover, not only across the region but in Europe and elsewhere, are irresistibly drawn towards these theatres of action, where they sooner or later get themselves killed. As terrorists, they were, almost invariably, in a position to be more effective where they were. They are lured away for emotional reasons, or "spiritual" if that word can be applied to something that is essentially not Godly but demonic. It is the Islamist analogy to the way young socialists, anarchists, and adventurers from across Europe were drawn to Spain during its Civil War in the 1930s. In addition to being annihilated, themselves, they deflate their cause by showing it to be losing. And what began as a recruiting inducement, soon becomes the opposite. For the near-certainty of getting killed oneself, in the cause of murdering (mostly) defenceless civilians, is not as attractive a motivator as the incendiaries make out. In the longer term, Iraq and subsequent budding Middle Eastern democracies become a draw to the opposite sort of adventurer: the much larger numbers of Arabs, Turks, Persians and other Muslims who had emigrated because there was neither opportunity nor freedom back home. Most people will, when prospects are good, remain in or return to their own countries. The exceptional cases do eventually assimilate abroad. For these reasons I think the struggle against violent Islamism, though it will take years more to complete, during which there will of course be plenty more carnage, is already won. And we are right to turn our principal attention towards the greater dangers offered by such rogue states as Iran, North Korea, and possibly Saudi Arabia, as they pursue nuclear weapons. Also, right to worry more about the behaviour of Communist China, as its perversely-constructed economy begins to rattle apart, its bloated military becomes more restless, and the national leadership the more aggressive, through desperation. It is not yet clear that the Chinese Gulag will liquidate itself as peacefully as the Soviet one did. Even more at large: It is an odd thing when Tom Friedman writes a good column in the New York Times, but it does sometimes happen. Yesterday he wrote of the experience of flying from France to Bangalore, India, in the wake of the week's French and Dutch referenda on the European constitution. He contrasted the situation in France, where voters struggle to preserve the 35-hour work week from the competitive forces of "globalization", with those in the world's outsourcing centre, where they struggle to achieve the 35-hour day. This is the future, which is at hand for India, and is likely to follow the Indian example in many parts of the Middle East -- "a hunger for opportunity that has been pent up like volcanic lava under four decades of socialism, and it's now just bursting out with India's young generation." (Friedman's prose style also makes me wince, but he has this right.) In summary: the Bush administration has done, in the main, the right things to extinguish Islamism. This leaves us with other, and potentially worse problems elsewhere, on which it has done nothing at all, nor yet appears to have anything resembling a plan. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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