Americans have two major disadvantages in conducting the war against Islamic Jihadi terror. We are a compassionate people who dislike the entire enterprise of organized killing of the opposition and a sizable cohort of Americans do not understand, on an intuitive emotional level, the kind of intensity and fervor that drives a religious fanatic who believes that his Deity demands blood sacrifices.
To our great credit as a Nation and civilization, most Americans believe that their religious beliefs are private experiences between them and their Creator. Despite some of the more extreme lamentations from various people who worry that the small minority who want our schools to teach Creationism as science means that America is a budding theocracy (and in the few places they have succeeded in local schools, the proponents tend to lose their seats in the following election cycle) the vast majority of Americans accept and support the separation of church and state, though there is often disagreement on the margins. It has also been a very long time since Jews and Christians have believed that their God demands blood.
It seems to me that even among those of my fellow countrymen who most firmly believe that their conception of God and religion is the only correct, "true", approach, there is a tremendous amount of tolerance for those who don't agree.
In part because of such tolerance, as well as confidence in their own faith, Christians and Jews do not feel humiliated by attacks on their faith. They may well feel appropriate anger and disdain for the purveyors of such nonsense as "Piss Christ" but such efforts to provoke, as noxious as they might be, do not have the power to evoke humiliation and its attendant infantile rage.
The same cannot be said of our Jihadi enemies, who react to the slightest criticism, even when unintended, as a savage humiliation deserving of death. This offers us a very powerful weapon against the Jihadis, if we will only have the wisdom and temerity to use it.
Most religious fanatics have significant Narcissistic pathology which means that beneath the surface of their fervor is a deeply felt, hidden, insecurity. Ridicule touches that insecurity and inflames it.
[I use the distinction between fanatci and believer that was recently described by Laurent Murawiec, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, from Deterring Those Who Are Already Dead:
The difference between the religious and the ideologically religious is this: the religious believer accepts that reality is a given, whereas the fanatic gambles everything on a pseudo-reality of what ought to be. The religious believer accepts reality and works at improving it, the fanatic rejects reality, refuses to pass any compromise with it and tries to destroy it and replace it with his fantasy.]
One of the great missed opportunities of the Cartoon intifada was exhibited by the diffidence with which too many people who should have known better, treated the episode. A forceful comment by Tony Blair or George Bush that while the cartoons were offensive, they were pert of the price we pay for free speech and that people who are secure in their religious beliefs have nothing to fear from such satire would have been much preferable to the European rush to condemn those who insult Islam and our media refusal to even run the cartoons.
However, we are learning. When the recent videotape of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was aired on al Jazeera, our military was quick to publicize the "out takes" that made him look incompetent and foolish. Dropping 500 pound bombs on his head, and taking care to use weapons that killed by concussion rather than shrapnel, allowed his body and face to be easily identifiable. This was a brilliant coup. Zarqawi was deprived of his dream of going out in a blaze of glory, killing some infidels along the way. It would have been even better to capture him alive, and I am certain our military would have preferred to do so, but the risk was undoubtedly not worth it.
Donald Sensing wrote in his post "And then one day, God showed up . . . " that Islamic Jihad success requires a belief that their conception of Allah as the one, true God is accurate. He quotes Ashraf al-Akhras whose wedding was destroyed in Amman by Zarqawi's bombs:
The death of Zarqawi does nothing to make Islamism's vision of utopia appear more likely in the eyes of the hundreds of millions of Muslims who are sitting on the fence, waiting to see which side to step off to. If al Qaeda et. al. really are the keepers of the true faith of Islam, as they insist they are, then it's reasonable for other Muslims to ask just when Allah will finally get in the game.
I think that more and more Muslims will decide that Ashraf al-Akhras is right: Allah is in the game, but not on al Qaeda's side.
When Saddam Hussein was pulled out of his rat hole and humiliating pictures of him were aired, there was much criticism by various sectors that it was somehow unfair to present this great man in such an unflattering light. I think some of the criticism came from anti-war media, as well as relatively open supporters of Saddam Husein, who recognized the power of humiliation as an effective weapon against our enemies and objected on that basis. In the same way there were some criticisms about airing the "blooper" tape from Zarqawi, though much more muted.
As part of the war effort, here are a couple of links to posts which offer further humiliation to Zarqawi:
Dry Bones covers the 72 virgins in two panels.
The Post-Postmodernist offers some actual pictures of what awaits Zarqawi; these are offensive and not at all politically correct.
We will know this war has been won when a future comic genius can do for Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi what Mel Brooks did for Adolf Hitler in The Producers.
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