At the moment, a great deal of effort is being expended to understand and/or spin the results of the election. The war in Iraq was a major influence on the electorate, though it is an open question whether the results were supportive of Democratic efforts to "get out now" or more likely, the outcome of frustration over the wearying, ongoing drip-drip-drip of casualties in combination with a media/Democratic driven sense that the war, as currently conducted, is unwinnable.
[In many important particulars, the United States won the war and succeeded in terminating the risk of Saddam Hussein obtaining Nuclear weapons. The problem now lies in trying to stabilize post-war Iraq while preparing for the next phases in the larger war on Islamic fascism; the larger war is not, at this time, primarily a military operation, but is ongoing nonetheless, and will very likely become a military operation before too long.]
Dinocrat identifies the war as being primarily between traditional Islam and the modern world. He also has suggested that an important part of the electorate is responding to disgust with the Islamic world and voted to essentially separate from and ignore them:
The Left, the Right, and the Separationists
The heart of the current conflict was identified by Pope Benedict XVI in that famous speech of his. He said that in Catholic theology as it now exists, God has to act with Reason. There is a reasonableness test we can apply to commands of God to determine if they are genuine — spreading religion by the sword could not be of God, he said, because such violence was not reasonable. By contrast, Islam teaches the “absolute transcendance” of God — there can be therefore no test of “reasonableness” on God’s actions or commandments; there is only obedience or disobedience. So, to the Islamist, if man’s Reason and individual judgment must be made submissive to the word of God in the Koran, however unreasonable those words may seem, so be it. The problem for the Modern World is thus this: if you do away with that subjectivity, you may do away with a lot of the sins of the Modern World — however, the cost is doing away with the Modern World itself, because Reason – submissive to nothing but logic and experimentation — has also been responsible for all the wealth and technology created over the last several centuries.
Thus our first practical point is that there is no reason to believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or others similarly situated, will not use nuclear weapons. They are in a war with the Modern World, and if it must be literally destroyed for man to properly submit to the will of God, so be it.
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We believe there is a pretty large group of Americans who, after watching 9-11 and all the daily witless violence in Iraq, have intuiitively arrived at the conclusion that the Islamic world is utterly irredeemable at present. They would be content to see our military wipe out Sadr and many thousands of Shiites and Sunnis, if necessary, in the hopes of teaching the Arab and Muslim world to go pick on someone else, but they no longer harbor any hope that an Unreformed Islamic world is fit for peace and democracy. They acknowledge that the vast majority of the people in these countries are probably fine folks, but observe that in country after country in the Arab and Muslim world, they count for nothing and one group or another of bully-boys always runs the show. Many of the Separationists would vote for total war if it was on the ballot; since it is not, they would prefer America not waste its time, treasure, and fine soldiers on a fantasy, but rather keep its powder dry for that day when total war will almost inevitably come from the enemy.
As if to reinforce Dinocrat's point, the New York Times has a remarkable finding buried within a remarkable piece of reporting, Qaeda Leaders Losing Sway Over Militants, Study Finds. The article describes a report that downplays the influence of the old guard of al Qaeda and the powerful influence of a small group of Islamic scholars on the nature and future of Jihad.
In a study billed as the “first systematic mapping” of an ideology sometimes called jihadism, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has found that Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, have had a relatively minor influence on the movement’s intellectual foundation. Among the network’s ideologists, they have come to be seen more as propagandists than strategic thinkers.
And while the two Qaeda leaders have released a flurry of video and audio messages to their followers over the past year, the study found that the scholarly work of a group of Saudi and Jordanian clerics — most notably Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a Jordanian — seems more likely to influence the next generation of Islamic militants.
The bombshell is in the 11th paragraph of a 15 paragraph story:
The report found that radical Islam, sometimes called Salafism, is so deeply embedded in the Arab world that Salafis now constitute a “majority or significant portion” of the Muslim population in the Middle East and North Africa. [Emphasis mine-SW]
Salafism is an intolerant form of supremacist Islam that is incompatible with other faiths and cultures. It is Saudi funded Salafism that has fueled much of the Sunni derived Islamist violence around the world. This would be sufficient evidence to raise the question of whether neo-isolationism can ever work in a world in which our enemies are basically imperialistic and expansionist, but there is worse in store. While the Saudis are the engine behind Salafism, the Iranians are working to extend their sway over the entire world of expansionist Islam. John at OpFor has the details in Ambitions of Caliphate:
Is Iran seeking a monopoly on global Islamic terrorism? According to the UK's Daily Telegraph, the Iranian government has been quietly slithering into the upper echelons of Al Qaeda, and are actively trying to install "their guy" as Bin Laden's successor.
I can't help but to think of the old "all roads lead to Rome" axiom from the days of the Empire. If Iran has its way, soon all avenues of terrorism may trace directly to Tehran.
While the thought of a "one terrorist team, one terrorist fight" under Iranian leadership may be unnerving, the corporatization of Islamic terror may actually simplify our War on Terror, in that Iran is centralizing terror organizations that have always used decentralization as a strength. If Iran succeeds in making those entities dependent on the Ayatollahs, as Hezbollah is, then eliminating Tehran would be a tremendous blow to Islamic terror.
Yesterday, Neo-isolationism, it's FANTASTIC left a comment on my Blog that suggested Neo-isolationism is the ideal approach. He believes that Iran can be contained and will inevitably self-destruct:
On the realistic front, I don't think anyone on either side of the aistle has a solution to our Iran problem, short of disastrous invasion, right now.
The best strategy for Washington is to wait in the weeds for the Iranian-Syrian bloc to disintigrate (which is already happening), open up the floodgates of civil war in Iraq in order to fuel widespread Sunni-Shia conflict (which will happen in a couple of years) and to see what happens to Islamofacism when oil prices are low, western aid nonexistant, and it is caught in an ethnic religious conflict with itself.
In many ways, this is similar to Tom Barnett's idea that by expanding the core, an inevitability, the danger from the gap will evaporate as the people there begin to demand to be part of the modern world:
As I’ve written many times: all of the long-term trends favor us WRT globalization’s inevitable penetration and “perversion” of the Middle East. Done right, Iraq could have served as a huge accelerant, triggering a 1989-like collapse of several nasty regimes in the region. But our incompetence there on the postwar comes back to haunt us, delaying the inevitable for far longer than it should, given our sacrifices and the boldness of the Saddam takedown.
Bush started this Long War, but he and his only seem to understand it in its temporal length, instead of its strategic breadth. That’s why we’re in the fix we’re in right now in Iraq.
I think their approach has some superficial appeal but is also incredibly dangerous. Neo-isolationism gets close to the problem but avoids the conclusion. I think Tom underestimates the power of reactionary Islam and its apocalyptic imperative.
Iran is run by religious true believers who have all the characteristics of the Malignant Narcissist who can not conceive of a world in which his desires are not primary. Like Hitler, they cannot conceive of the state existing without them and are more than willing to sacrifice themselves and their Nation for their beliefs. In fact, their belief structure requires suicidal murder of the infidel. Islam cannot exist in its current form if it is repudiated by reality. By appearing to appease the violent forces in Iraq, we strengthen the beliefs and resolve of our enemies. Iran and al Qaeda will have no problem uniting against common enemies. Once they have destroyed Israel and dhimmified Europe and America, there is no question they would next turn on each other. It is inarguable that their system is inflexible and will eventually fail, but the danger is that once they begin to crumble, they will use their WMD.
With Iran announcing that they have all the ingredients in place for a nuclear weapon, here is what we know:
1) Iran and al Qaeda have shown they can and will work together; neither has qualms about using WMD to further their goals.
2) Islamic fascism is a stultifying, reactionary system that cannot last long in the real world. As currently practiced, it is essentially parasitic on the modern world and completely dependent on the civilized world.
3) Once their temporal reign is threatened, everything suggests that there are no restraints under which they are willing to operate.
And thus, the question for Tom Barnett and Neo-isolationism becomes:
Are you willing to bet that Iran and al Qaeda will fail without initiating a Nuclear and/or Biological conflagration?
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