Unless of Course, we Lose………..

In order to understand the status of the conflict between Jihadist Islam and the West in general, one must first define the term enemy and how the juxtaposition as enemies comes about. At the present stage of the conflict there can be little doubt that it was these elements of Islam that declared the West to be their enemy, and had been engaged it committing act of war long before all but a very few bothered to take their actions seriously. Historically the argument could be made that the conflict goes back for nearly a millennium, having it roots in Moorish conquest and subsequent expulsion from Spain and Portugal and the conflicts with the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans.

The attitude of many practitioners of Islam is that once Islam conquers an area or nation its inhabitants have no further right to reassert themselves and reclaim their lands. Their only choices being to convert, pay the tax for not converting or die. That this is a complete anathema to Judeo-Christian Western civilization is an argument that should not even need to be made.

It is the Jihadists who have defined the alternatives as either our destruction or theirs. When a group or nation has declared itself to be your enemy, wages war against you, kills your soldiers and civilians and neither shows or expresses any inclination to negotiate except as a means to gain a position of political or military advantage from which to wage further war, WHAT CHOICE TO YOU HAVE BUT TO WAGE WAR AGAINST THEM AND KILL THEM AS EXPEDIENTLY AS POSSIBLE?

It is they who have declared us to be their enemy and waged war against the west. The time for turning the other cheek has long since passed but sadly our politicians lack the courage to wage total war as was done in WWII. As ugly as they are, wars are not won by negotiating from a weak or defensive position. Wars are won by killing the enemy and destroying their ability and will to continue the fight, leading to either their total destruction or their coming to the negotiating table from a weak and defensive position.

That is a lesson the history has taught a thousand times, but the moral relativists just won’t or don’t want to see it applied to this conflict.

No reasoned Westerner would define all Moslems as bad. But I must reiterate it is the Jihadist ‘s interpretation of Islam that has declared war against us and defined our status as non-Moslem as justification. I have heard no declarations of a need or desire to kill Moslems in the name of Christ, yet the opposite is the battle cry of the Jihadists. Neither the US nor any Western nation has declared that the desired end of conducting war against Jihadist Islam or the dismantling of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny in Iraq was their conversion to Christianity. Again the same cannot be said of the Jihadists.

To the Jihadists the absence of status as a Moslem or failure to adhere to their interpretation of Islam is the definition of the loss of innocence. But for the moral relativists the problem is one of “lack of understanding.” If there was such a thing as a Neville Chamberlain award they would win it hands down.

Putting forth the Crusades as an argument or justification is disingenuous at best. No one could rationally argue that Christianity as practiced today is the same as it was practiced in the 1100’s. The same cannot be said for Islam. Christianity went through a reformation and has evolved in its interpretation and practice. The inquisition is an historical fact but it is not an ongoing practice. Again the same cannot be said of Islam.

The supposition and expounding on only parts of the story of Christianity is what is dangerous. Twisting half-truths as the whole story is far more dangerous than lies cut from whole cloth. The spread of Christianity’s through most of the Mediterranean and Roman world came about because Emperor Constantine came to realize that it had grown to become a force he could no longer reckon with. Stories of his “miraculous” conversion not withstanding it became more a matter of “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em.”

If Christianity then became a means through which he could exert control of the Empire so be it. He was a Roman Emperor after all. Rome had a long history of tolerance for the religions of conquered nations. It was only when the corruption of the likes of Nero, Caligula and Claudius wrought havoc upon the Roman economy that the Christians became the targets of convienience persecution and the scapegoats for the consequences of Imperial excess. Yet it continued to grow, leading to Constantine’s momentous decision.

Neither the excess’s nor shortcomings, successes or failures of the Bush administration are relevant to the issue. The Jihadists were at war with us before he came to office and will still be at war with us when Obama is gone, unless and until we address it as an issue of total war rather than one of “proportional response” or criminal acts, or as long as there are those in power who view the world through rose colored glasses or through a lens of political correctness or moral relativism.

To do so is to venture into the realm of the absurd. As stated one of the root causes of the aggression is because we are not Moslems. We should no more waste time and effort trying to ‘understand’ them than one should try to reason with a rapist. When faced with kill or be killed, you kill or you get killed. Even if one could reason with them or ‘understand’ their motive do you honestly think that it would change their tactics or murderous intent? To me that answer seems a pretty clear and unambiguous no.

So then getting back to the Jihadists, it’s not a matter of invasion or conquest, it’s a matter of destroying their will to fight. Look at the air campaign in the 1st gulf war. The Iraqi army's will to fight was destroyed before the first tank crossed the border.

My personal ideas or suggestions not withstanding are strategic not tactical. Just as in WWII if we knew the Germans or Japanese were using a particular town or city as a marshalling area or production center we bombed the crap out of it and civilian casualties were not of paramount concern. The object was to destroy the enemy’s ability and will to fight. We didn’t fight the war with one hand tied behind our back. When Truman made the decision to drop the a-bomb on Japan it was not out of some blood lust it was a calculated decision as the quickest way to end the war with the fewest further casualties on both sides.

To those who would choose not to accept the cogency of such an arguments, or would so easily dismiss it as vague or just plain wrong, that is of course their right and I might argue obligation. But with such rejection comes another obligation, one to propose your own course of action. The difference between the Germans of the WWII era and the Jihadist of today is that Germans at least had a rational fear of death and a semblance of what would become of their posterity. The Jihadists do not possess either of these. Hence there repeated call that they “love death” more than we “love life”. It is not possible to reason with the irrational. How else can we conclude otherwise than that if they are so in love with death that they will not stop until we give it to them?

The murdering rapist is in YOUR house, what are you going to do? As I asked at the very beginning: WHAT OTHER CHOICE DO WE HAVE? If you can’t or won’t answer that question with a viable solution that has a reasonable expectation of success, then what place do you really have in the argument, other than as a victim?

For further background see my previous post “The Psychological Disconnect of the Petro Dollar.”