Yesterday I discussed one "hinge" point which differentiates Neo-cons from their former affiliation as current day liberals, that is, whether or not the threat from Islamic radicalism is overstated. Despite some efforts to re-argue the point, and with the recognition that few minds can be changed merely by an accretion of evidence, I would suggest that the viewpoint presented here (that Islamic fascism [and possibly, Islam itself and its systemic derivative Sharia law] represent a clear danger to the West and our way of life) warrants respectful and careful debate rather than ad hominem arguments and dismissive attempts to pathologize one's opponents. That being said, in the comments, Douglass Carmichael, among his many excellent points raises a recurring idea worth consideration:
The war against terror narrative makes more enemies and polarizes, while the environment, climate and poverty narrative requires that everyone be friends. Bush is taking us farther away from this narrative and holding us all hostage to a fate we needn't encourage.
Unless I am mistaken, this is a restatement of the idea that our aggressive response to 9/11, including the invasion of Iraq, is producing more Jihadis than we are killing or capturing. Further, Douglass quite correctly points out the corollary, that the war on terror, whatever we call it, is fundamentally an ideological struggle.
The first proposition is impossible to prove or disprove; we do not have the option of setting up a controlled experiment where Iraq was never invaded, to see if less Jihadis would have been created. Instead, I would like to propose a bit of a thought experiment and consider the mind of the young Jihadi.
A young man growing up in a religious household in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, has limited options in life. His best chance for an education is in a Madrassa, most of which are funded by the most extreme form of Wahhabi Islam. He learns that Muslims have been blessed with the final form of Allah's word, which is perfect and can never be questioned. His education primarily involves memorizing the Koran and the Hadiths, which are filtered through the prism of his Imam's interpretations of the sacred texts. He has been taught form the earliest age that the Kuffir, including Jews and Christians, are beneath him in status and can never be trusted or befriended. These views are not questioned at home; they are "givens". Free thinking and inquiry are not supported, and in fact, are dangerous. Early on, our young incipient Jihadi, has b]learned to hate the "other" while at the same time his vulnerability to humiliation has been honed and refined by his upbringing. He is the little prince at home among the women and girls, but small and weak in the world of men, often physically and sexually abused by his superiors.
[The prevalence of child abuse in the Arab world is starting to be explored but there are no real quantitative numbers, so much of this is based on individual accounts and anecdotes. I would especially recommend Phyllis Chesler's The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom for her insights into Islamic child rearing practices. Also of note are Lebanon
Child-Rearing Practices and The Arab Family and the Challenge of Change.]
The young man also knows that his older brothers, all educated in similar Madrassas, lack dignified work and even in countries that supply them with adequate material abundance (which includes not only the oil-rich states, but many Western states that offer generous welfare benefits) fail to have the combination of status and wealth that they have been led to believe were theirs by right. He sees daily humiliation. Worse, he knows who is responsible for his plight. For many years, the primary focus of externalization and projection int he Islamic world has been on the hated and feared Americans and Jews, who viciously oppress the poor innocent, Palestinians. In the Arab and Islamic world there is no real effort to understand how the Israelis have been able to build a modern technological nation in the desert without benefit of oil or natural resources. It is simply a given that they have stolen the Palestinian's land and continue to oppress and torment them. The humiliation attendant on this knowledge, that a small group of people who you have been taught your whole life are inferior, have created a society so far superior to yours that the gap is incalculable, is intense and chronic.
On some level our young Jihadi also recognizes that his education has left him singularly unprepared to enter and become a part of the modern world, which he can see using the very technology his hated enemies have created. His envy fuels his rage.
Additionally, girls and women have been forbidden and exciting objects of lust throughout his adolescence and into his adult years. He rarely can see a real women, but is fascinated and addicted to the internet porn that is so readily available. He also knows that marriage and sex are a distant dream which may never be available to him but seem to be readily available to his enemies; once again his rage ratchets up.
Thus we are left with a young man, filled with passions that have no outlet, filled with rage and humiliation that has no redress, with no acceptable and realistic route to marriage and status. In fact, the primary route to high status among his fellow Wahhabi educated cohort is via Jihad. In some areas this means suicide bombing, in other areas, it means fighting against the infidel.
Until the American invasion of Afghanistan, there were camps in that country where you could learn to be a soldier for Islam, an expert with weapons, with specialized skills in the use of explosives and stable bases in which to perfect tactical and strategic planning. Estimates have ranged into the high 5 figures for the number of young men who have been trained as Jihadis. The graduates of these training camps are the elite of the Jihadi fighters. Once the training camps were closed down, the seething mass of young angry men were directed to the four great areas for (Sunni) Jihad; Palestine, Bosnia, Kashmir, and Iraq. The easiest destination, right in the middle of the Ummah is Iraq, and that has been the destination of a great many young men from the Sunni states surrounding Iraq.
The upshot is that Douglass Carmichael is both right and wrong. By responding militarily we have closed down the training camps where young Jihadis could acquire the skills to be most dangerous. We have also removed several state sponsors of terror (including Iraq) which represented the greatest threat of Jihadis acquiring WMD.
If we had not invaded, there would be a steady, though smaller, stream of highly trained Jihadis coming out of the camps in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Pakistan; our military response has closed down 2 1/2 (Afghanistan, Iraq, part of Pakistan) of these Jihadi resources, and cut the supply of young men into the ranks of Professional Jihadis. At the same time, the generation of Jihadis by cultural, educational, and familial has continued and led to an increased pool of ready amateur Jihadis.
The bulk of the foreign fighters in Iraq are amateurs and have been used as cannon fodder; they have died in large numbers. They will never have the opportunity to learn the skills necessary to threaten large numbers of innocents. At the same time, unless the breeding grounds, the dysfunctional cultures from which these dysfunctional and murderous men emerge, are cleared, there will be an endless supply of Jihadis.
The only long term solution will include bringing Islam into the Modern world (though some here have suggested that is impossible, I think that conclusion is premature at best) but in order for the longer term solution to work, we must find a way to decrease the risk of a paradigm shattering event which could precipitate the clash of civilizations and the best way to do that is to minimize the production of professional Jihadis.
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