War on Islamic Fascists

President Bush yesterday: “The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.”  The President is notably inarticulate but he is at his best when plain spoken.  With hindsight, “War on Terror” was a naming mistake.  Our adversary is not a tactic; it’s not even an ideology; it’s specific people – Islamic fascists – who are making war on us and on much of the rest of civilization as well as helpless targets like the Sudanese.

Jeff Jarvis blogging in BuzzMachine: “Reuters reports that Muslims are ‘bristling’ at the term Islamic fascists. Well, tough shit. I am bristling at the refusal of the Islamic world to condemn the murder and mayhem being rained down around the world by the extremist fascists among them. Rather than attacking the language in press releases, why not hold a press conference attacking the attackers?”

On a positive note CNN reports this morning:  “A British intelligence official has told CNN that the original information about a plot to down commercial jetliners in mid-Atlantic with explosives came from a tip from the Muslim community in Britain.” And Pakistan apparently cooperated in breaking the plot.

The Stowe Reporter: “Yet most of the rest of the world, crippled by fear of its own, economic necessities and moral ambiguity about the first Jewish state, has chosen pathetic and dangerous appeasement. As Hoover Institution Fellow Victor David Hansen said recently in a column: ‘Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress. In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around.’”

Speaking of Europe in 1938, I’m reading The Duel: the Eighty-Day Struggle Between Hitler and Churchill by John Lukacs. Lukacs writes: “By 1940… There were people, in many cases a considerable minority, who opposed their government and its waging war not for pacifist but for political and ideological reasons; and these included their sympathies for the political and ideological systems of their own nation’s enemies… Even in the Unites States where ‘isolationism’ was widespread and politically strong, consistent isolationists were few and far between.  Most isolationists, bitter opponents of Roosevelt and his administration, were not opposed to armaments and the military.  What they were opposed to was this war, the war waged by the aged and corrupt British and French empires against Germany, and the inclinations of Roosevelt and others to side with the former.”

I think voters in Connecticut let their dislike of this President lead them into a bad mistake.  Joe Lieberman understands the adversary we face.

The  Stowe Reporter, in the same editorial quoted above, poses: “Every American would do well to imagine for a minute if the circumstances were here. What if our sworn enemies, Hezbollah, an arm of fundamentalist Iran that is dead set on destroying this nation, moved into land on the border run by our democratically fragile neighbor?”  The answers are already written in our history.  We had much less provocation for the Mexican-American War than Israel has for its current campaign.  The finest hour of John Kennedy’s presidency was when he risked nuclear war to stop the installation of Russian missiles in Cuba.

Last week there were pictures of protestors marching in London with banners saying “We are all Hizbullah now.”  Where are the banners saying “We are all airline passengers”?  Where are the impassioned protests against Islamic fascists who practice terrorism?  Why isn’t the ‘Arab Street’ outraged at those who blow up mosques and schools in Baghdad for sectarian reasons?

You may have noticed that I am not giving two sides in this rant.  I think Islamic fascists are wrong and those who are confronting them now are right.  Appeasement is always tempting in the short run – it stops the killing for the moment.  But it feeds the beast and increases suffering and death not very long after.  Yes, the campaign in Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel is exacting an enormous price in human suffering on both sides.  Does that mean the right answer is to immediately stop all shooting? No, because any solution which leaves Hezbollah in place will mean more death and more suffering in the not-very-distant future.

This picture is from the blog of Yaron Galai (disclosure: he’s Israeli; I’m American and Jewish):

Like most cartoons, it’s an oversimplification.  But pictures also tell a story in ways that words can’t.  When you fire at a target hiding behind a baby carriage, you create a photo op for propagandists.  Here’s how the same cartoon would appear if broadcast on al Jazeera (or perhaps BBC):

Comments

[David Usher]

Hi Tom,

From a fellow Vermonter, you are right on target. Too many people fail to understand the elemental nature of the conflict that is waged by the RATs (Radical Islamic Terrorists), otherwise called Islamic Fascists. However, fascism is an amorphous term and means almost nothing to average Americans beyond Democracy = good, Fascism = bad.

The key element with RATs is their often stateless coterie and shared ideolgy that includes the eradication of Israel and the destruction of Western civilization. Pacification will never appease this 'to die for' world view.

Painful as it may be for many to accept, RATs will eventually require eradication. There can be no negotiation or truce with this violent ideology.

[Eric Johnson]

Nice post Tom! You might enjoy this...

http://www.aynrand.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=23543.0&dlv_id=21201&JServSessionIdr005=jyi07v4ju1.app1a

[drive-by triangulation]

I'm really not trying to be the poster child for comment moderation but:

Lamont won because Lieberman has been acting like an asshat.

You claim that Lieberman understands certain things. Are you also then claiming that Lamont does not?

Yours in explicitness,
d. triangulation

[Chris Zaharias]

Luke is wrong on two key points:

1)While Israel is 'officially' a state created by outside powers 50 years ago, Alan Dershowitz's 'The Case for Israel' proves conclusively that most of the land that makes up Israel was legally acquired by Israeli's in the decades *prior* to the creation of the state. Luke, I suggest you read that book and dispel your mind of the myths you've been force fed.

2) Our war in Iraq does not have to be justified by links between Iraq and Al Qaeda proven in a court of law, whether you agree or not, Luke. We both know where the UN Security Council members fall on the topic anyways, so the idea of an unrigged court is preposterous.

For a better perspective on why the war in Iraq makes sense for America *and* the rest of the world, you should read "The Pentagon's New Map" by Thomas Barnett, which does a masterful job of clarifying how the lack of integration between Middle East oil-producing states and the global economy is *directly* tied to the existence and growth of terrorism and Al Qaeda in particular.

Luke, step out of your Unix scripts for a second and debug your foreign policy code.

Kudos to you, Tom, for having the guts to speak you're mind. I'm running a global paid search campaign right now to get the word out on my own points of view (which seem to jibe with yours), but am doing so incognito to avoid reprisals.

[anonymous]

http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm

[Luke Kanies]

I just thought I'd let you know that I'm unsubscribing from your blog as a result of this post. Clearly you have a right to say whatever you want on your own blog; I'm not trying to censor you, I'm just not going to read this any more.

Your initial point was valid, and if you had stuck to the current London near-incident I wouldn't have cared. But you, like so many in our administration, claim that our misfounded war in Iraq is somehow related to terrorism (other than a cause of it, of course), even though it's been shown time and again that there has been nothing but hatred between Saddam and Al Queida -- Iraq was the only secular Middle East state until we destroyed its government.

But then you go from there to comparing the US, which has been a separate state for more than 200 years and was founded by its own populace, to Israel, which is a state created by outside powers barely 50 years ago. Like essentially every other state created in the wake of world wars I and II (e.g., Iraq and Yugoslavia), Israel is a breeding ground for war. No, I won't let you just ignore that part of it. I expect that has a lot more to do with the problems in Israel than the fact that it's Jewish; I expect if Israel were Christian it wouldn't be any better off.

Yes, the extremist Islamists are evil. Yes, it's horrendous that the rest of the Islamic world is not decrying them. Yes, Hezbullah is in a less tenable position than Israel. But no, Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism until we invaded. And no, Israel doesn't have any more right to kill civilians than Hezbullah does (what's the kill rate these days -- still around 10 to 1 non-Israelis to Israelis?). And no, kicking people like Lieberman out of office is not pandering to terrorists, it's pandering to democracy and the fact that the Iraq war has caused more terrorism than it will ever stop.

[Aaron deOliveira]

Thank you for this post. It captures how I feel about this conflict and the ones preceding it.

In our day it is getting harder to remember why we're doing something 2 years down the road because we're able to hear the screams of the innocents on the other side. It's sometimes hard to remember that their not the ones being targeted, but that they're being used as a shield.