What Is This War that We Are In?

by Troy Beane

Many will say it is a war for oil, or a war for world dominance.  A few others will say it is a war of legacy, the President is merely carrying out what his father failed to do.  Hardly any will say what it truly is, a war of survival, The War of the West.

No, not the old Wild West, but the survival of Western culture.  We find ourselves entrenched in a global war of attrition against an idea.  We should feel comfortable here, for we have fought these wars before.  We fought mercantilism in the Revolutionary War, and colonialism in the War of 1812.  We fought Fascism, Socialism and Communism in WWII and the Cold War in places like Cuba, Vietnam and Korea.  We may lose a few battles, but we always win the war.  The reason we always win is because we have a better idea than the one we are battling.

This war is not simply a Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), or an operation to create a free Iraq (OIF), or the destruction of the Taliban(Enduring Freedom) and on the homefront it isn't just awareness (Noble Eagle, originally Eternal Vigilance).  It is a long, slow process of undermining the core belief systems of Islamo-Facism. 

We all awoke to a world dramatically different than the one we had perceived on 9/11/01.  The annoying pestulence of terrorism had become a true doctrine of modern warfare.  Some saw the signs of growing audacity by terrorist organization, but none wanted to beleive that what they saw was true, that the world of the American '90's was a fantasy. 

What we have laid before us now is a task which will require the perseverance of children and grandchildren.  The Western world has treated the Muslim world as an unruly stepchild for hundreds of years.  The complacency we found in leaving the Palestinian issue "stable" and unresolved has created another problem in garnering popular support for a global jihad.  The grand differences between Western and Islamic cultures leaves us no recourse but armed conflict.  We failed to realize that and the result was 9/11/01.  We in the West like to believe that our world view is shared by all of humanity.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  In the Muslim world life is best described as "nasty, brutish and short" to take a line from Thomas Hobbes 'Leviathan'.  In such an environment cultural norms become consistent with the arbitrary use of force to emphasize purpose.  Talk is cheap, and diplomacy is perceived as weakness, or an unwillingness to accept pain in the process of conflict resolution.  Weakness only invites action.  This is representative of the view of Al-Qaeda following our response to the US Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania in 1998.  President Clinton looked at all the options available to him and decided that a 'show of force', the lauching of few cruise missles at an empty camp would be sufficient to appease the angry public.  That is exactly how our actions were perceived, as little effort as necessary to accomplish the minimum level of acceptance.  They did not beleive that we would choose to stand and fight.

Now that we are in the fight, how do we end it?

Well, there is no easy answer compatible with our societal and cultural value system.  From an intellectually honest and objective perspective, the shortest route to victory is the annihlation of the race through the use of Nuclear Weapons.  That is not an option we will accept as it is an unwarranted disregard for human life.  The path we have chosen is the slow, process of erasing the idea of Islamic ethnocentrism and replacing it with a respect for human equality, regardless of race, religion or creed.

The only method of achieving that goal without the annihilation of the entire culture is through democratization. Our strength is our idea.  Freedom and Democracy are contagious, they were strong enough to stop Nazi-Facism and Communist Facism, and they are strong enough to defeat the cultural intolerance of Islamic Facism. We need only be aware of the situation to choose how to resolve it.  So now you know, "and knowing is half the battle."