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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
March 1, 2009
The retreat
Islamism is enjoying a resurgence throughout the Islamic world, though it may remain invisible a little longer to Western observers relying on media that have lost interest in the topic. It will become visible again only when there are renewed, newsworthy terrorist attacks on Western targets.For the moment, this resurgence may be detected only in the accelerated retreat of the forces of order, in places like Pakistan's North-West Frontier, where the authorities have recently negotiated a ceasefire in which large areas of Pakistan's sovereign territory are effectively surrendered to the rule of Taliban-like militias imposing strict Sharia; or the overturning of transient gains made against Islamist forces in Yemen and the Horn of Africa. The reasons for this resurgence are ready to hand. To the Islamist mind, the United States and her allies appear mortally wounded by a financial crisis that is metastasizing into an international depression. While they, too, suffer from the collapse of the oil price, and such funding as depends upon it, their war against the "Great Satan" remains asymmetrical, and material setbacks count harder against their enemy. But there is a larger, though less tangible reason for their renewed confidence. "Bush and Blair" -- the enemies Islamists most feared and detested -- are now gone from the world stage, and the vision and determination with which they resisted Islamism has become suddenly a thing of the past. The new American president, Barack Obama, has come to power with a promise to negotiate with America's most deadly enemies; he signalled weakness unambiguously in a television interview to the Muslim world; he wants out of Iraq, and does not know what he is doing in Afghanistan. The very gloom and doom he is preaching on the home front, in order to get huge "progressive" spending measures through Congress, is the final confirmation that the United States is down and ready for the kicking. Similarly, Hillary Clinton's new tone -- both for her and for the U.S. -- can only cheer Islamist hearts. American Jewish leaders have already expressed alarm at her recent remarks on Israel. The proposal to drop nearly a billion U.S. tax dollars into "rebuilding Gaza" after the recent Israeli incursions is exceptionally alarming. The money can only go into the pockets of Hamas, given their total control of the territory. Much of it will certainly be used to rebuild the Hamas arsenal, for renewed missile and other terror attacks against Israelis. The new, increasingly "neutral" or indifferent U.S. posture towards Israel was on display in preparations for the United Nations' Durban II conference. U.S. delegates failed to challenge resolutions that would equate "Zionism" with "racism," and identify Israel alone among all nations as a violator of "human rights." Under intense domestic pressure, the Obama administration withdrew from the conference Friday, having come perilously close to participating in an international anti-Semitic propaganda stunt, which would provide ideological cover for murderous assaults on Israel and Jews everywhere. Israel has not been the key target of most Islamist movements, however. The focus, for the past several years, has been on Iraq, primarily, and secondarily Afghanistan and Pakistan. The destruction of the secular democracy now established in Iraq (unique in the Arab world) has been the priority both in propaganda, and in practical terror operations. If the U.S. and allies abandon the Iraqi regime (the way Jimmy Carter abandoned the Shah of Iran), everything President Bush accomplished will have been more than undone. The pressure on other Arab states to make the sort of concessions to Islamists that Pakistan is now making will grow exponentially, for the world will look very different to the "moderate" tyrants of Arabia, Egypt and North Africa, once the U.S. has fled. There will, moreover, be nothing left standing in the way of Iran's emergence as the regional superpower. The proxies of Iran's patronage -- Hezbollah and Hamas -- are daggers officially pointed at the throat of Israel. But every regional Arab regime is vividly aware that they could be pointed elsewhere. When I wrote about these questions of "realpolitik," diplomacy and war, over the past eight years, it was with the assurance that while it might make mistakes, the Bush administration was at least aware of the threats, and aware that America's own security depended on how those threats were parried. Quite frankly, after 40 days of the Obama presidency, it is obvious that this realism is gone. We have a new administration that genuinely does not grasp the consequences of retreat from its inherited international obligations. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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