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COMMENTARY
August 13, 2005
Now the good news
On Wednesday, I gave “five unanswerable reasons to despair about the future of the Middle East -- and therefore about any alleviation of the ‘root cause’ of the Islamist violence” against us. Today I look at the bright side.To start, it never makes sense to despair, no matter how hopeless the situation -- and the one we are facing is not nearly as bad as it is likely to get. After all, Islamist terror has only cost the West a few thousand lives, in the time since 9/11 -- thanks mostly to the speed and vigour with which George W. Bush and allies counter-attacked. However, the potential remains, for Islamist strikes to cost many millions of lives, to destroy the Western economy, and thus reduce Western cities to Hobbesian conditions. I think a careful consideration of my five points (about the apparent permanence of terror-engendering circumstances in, respectively, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine) should persuade any reader that the Islamist assault on the West will continue for more than a generation. Moreover, as we are seeing in Iraq, we must expect it to become more potent as our enemy discovers, by trial and error, what our weaknesses are, and how best to exploit them. Reciprocally, the evidence has consistently shown, that where our defences are rigorous, the Islamists will not strike. They choose, exclusively, soft targets; and fight bravely only when cornered. While it must sound like a matter of little consequence, the chief weakness that our enemy has found could be summarized in the words, “political correctness”. By creating taboos against even discussing various realities (such as the dangers presented by massive Muslim immigration, or the nature of Islam), we have rendered ourselves essentially defenceless against attack. It is worse than that: for from an Islamist view, educated Western society is not only morally rotten, decadent and spineless, but run through with a huge class of what Lenin called “useful idiots”. These are the kind of “liberals” who think prison conditions in Guantanamo are something to obsess about. The Islamists would not be attacking the West, if they did not believe themselves to have discovered a soft underbelly. Their rhetoric makes this clear: that they believe Western people can be induced to panic easily; that when panic spreads, a society will collapse. They are certainly right on this latter point. Hence the terror weapon, which has, incidentally, been the key to Arab war strategy through 14 centuries. The failure to follow the invasion of Iraq, with at least the threat of more military action -- against e.g. the regimes in Iran and Syria that are openly feeding the insurgency in Iraq -- has rekindled Islamist hopes. Again, it is well to examine their rhetoric, which is quite candid. Shortly after 9/11, the Islamists were triumphalist. At the height of the American operation in Iraq, they were themselves slipping into despair. But especially since the terror hits on London, they have become triumphalist again. And morale is crucial to them. They now believe the U.S. and allies have given their best shot; and that growing opposition within America itself, to the project of rebuilding Iraq, will ensure a reckless retreat, soon. “Kill enough Marines, and the Yankees will go home,” is their very simple, and sound, analysis. And with the Americans gone, Iraq is theirs (equally simple, less sound). If America does retreat, the hellgates are open. The Islamist focus will shift immediately from what they interpreted (correctly) as the “front line”, to “pursuing the enemy in retreat”. With great certainty, we may predict a sharp increase in terror strikes within the West itself, when Iraq is abandoned. I am assuming, for the sake of my “optimistic scenario”, that this will sooner or later come to pass. I think the Islamist analysis of the present state of our societies and rulers is right on the money; that characters like Bush, Blair, and Howard are exceptions. Leaders like José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Gerhard Schroeder, and Paul Martin are the rule. They would be wiser, however, to judge us not by our reactions when we think we are safe, but by those when we think we are in peril. That is why the attitudes manifested, even by our Left, in the days immediately following 9/11, are more indicative of the way we will respond, once the Islamists step up their attacks. And that, in turn, is why I am optimistic, that the West will reawaken in the longer run. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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