As Washington awaits General Petraeus's report on 9/11, and the late, unlamented Osama bin Laden promises a new video as part of al Qaeda's psychological war against the West, several lessons are becoming clear about the Long War. Most importantly, lessons from Iraq and the Palestinian Territories (especially Gazastan), reveal the intimate relationship between the Islamists and the West that can either marginalize or nurture them. In every front in this war, Jihad exhibits a profound and dynamic dependency on the Western world that is determinative.
The lesson may be clearest in Iraq, specifically in Anbar province. By losing Anbar we set the stage for our current success, which would never have been possible, no matter how many troops we had in Iraq, if we had not first lost the battle for Anbar. No proud people will long tolerate an occupation if they have the means to resist. The Sunnis quite understandably experienced the American troops as occupiers. They had no real experience of America and the American military beyond their own propaganda (importantly accentuated by the propaganda efforts of the anti-war MSM, efforts that were voraciously ingested and amplified by the anti-American Arab media) and not unexpectedly, their violent resistance led to the effective surrender of Anbar province to the Jihadis. Once entrenched in power, the Islamists did what every fanatical group has done throughout history: They used terror to maintain their rule. They instituted their cramped, vicious version of Sharia and terrorized, terrified, and alienated the very population whose forbearance they required in order to thrive. Once the subject population recognized that they had escaped the frying pan only to land in the fire (sometimes quite literally), the stage was set for the American troops to be warily welcomed as the lesser of two evils; only after the true evil of al Qaeda was evidenced could the Sunnis offer the time and space for the American military to show they could be "no truer friend." Our success in Anbar, and now in Diyala, absolutely depended on our first losing. An argument can also be made that a similar trajectory in Afghanistan was a pre-requisite for the relative ease with which our military overthrew the Taliban. (And, despite almost daily news stories touting the resurgence of the Taliban, the fact is that they have been thoroughly marginalized and their only successes are the murder of innocents, further alienating the population who comprise the sea they must swim within.)
The one area where losing has not been a prerequisite for winning remains Palestine. This is a peculiarity of the Palestinian culture and the Israeli diffidence, and relates to a second way in which the war can be won or lost.
If the strategy of losing to win succeeds in Iraq, as all indications suggest, the strategy touted by the anti-war caucus of losing to lose is a guarantee of disaster. All agree that in a strictly military sense, the Islamists can never directly face the West. This is as true of al Qaeda as Gaza, Iran, and Hezbollah. However, when a Western military is crippled by ineffective civilian leadership, the Islamists can convince themselves they are winning, which reinforces their control and increases their recruiting. The ineptness of the Olmert government in Israel is instructive. Had the Israeli military accepted the necessity of doing what the government announced they were going to do last summer (ie, destroy Hezbollah) and accepted the casualties that would have accrued, we would likely have a very different situation in the Middle East today. The people of Lebanon would not have a mini-Islamist state in half their country (Hezbollah now controls a contiguous area from north of the Litani River to the Bekaa valley to the border with Syria) and Syria's influence would have been significantly impacted. Instead, the HISH alliance grows stronger, easily intimidating the weak civilian government of Lebanon and continuing a small scale war of attrition with Israel. Sderot is a city under siege, the Israelis are paralyzed by their need to believe in the "Peace process" and no end of the crisis state is in sight.
It is in the important arena of the information war that the West is doing its poorest job in this war. Adam Brodsky describes some of the ways in which our response to the Long War is "Schizophrenic". In A Weird Way To Wage War, he catalogs some of the inexplicable acts that have given hope and strength to the Jihadists and asks a pointed question:
Again, America's formidable overall response - bolstering homeland security, intelligence-gathering and counter-terror programs and taking the fight to the enemy abroad - has served the nation well.
But the jihadists have drawn strength from some of our other actions. Their morale, if not resources, would have been worse - had our responses been tougher, more consistent and broadly supported.
Yes, it's perfectly American to pity terrorists and blame ourselves for "overreacting." But as the war drags on, time will only further soften our resolve.
Americans must decide: Do we let down our guard - and wait for the next awful hit? Or do we recall the debt we owe the 3,000 victims, and America's next generation, to stamp out the terrorist scourge as quickly and thoroughly as possible?
Democracy is by its nature a messy form of government and ours is messier than most, considering how split we are as a nation between those who adhere (whether knowingly or unknowingly) to an effectively collectivist ideology versus those who believe the key strength of our culture comes from our basic committeemen to the individual. Unfortunately, our MSM and much of our governmental organs lag behind the citizenry's sense of the enemy.
When we offer special status to a group and allow them to control parts of the agenda (eg, the self-censorship based on fear of our MSM, in terms of such recent failures as their cowardice during the cartoon Jihad, or the ongoing courtship of groups like CAIR which are merely well dressed thugs whose disingenuous and promiscuous use of the Islamaphobe epithet attempts to control our discourse) we risk potentiating their appeal.
At the same time, the Jihadis have had, as noted, an historical tendency to over-reach prematurely. Adam Brodsky worries that our laxity will make a future attack more likely. That may well be true, but a future successful attack on the level of 9/11 will almost certainly lead to a response that will make our current arguments over the Patriot Act moot. The few who will still protest against "illegal wiretapping" of foreigners and those in this country who are in contact with them, will be instantly marginalized and ignored by the panicked politicians who will race to implement a more robust Patriot Act in order to avoid being tarred with responsibility for the laxity they enabled. It happened after 9/11 and the recurrence will exhibit itself with immodest alacrity.
The idea that we had to lose Anbar before we could win Anbar (and by extension Iraq) has a parallel in the world of political Islam. I have suggested that Islamism is incompatible with modernity and I believe we have current examples (Afghanistan with the Taliban, Anbar with al Qaeda) as well as evolving examples (Iran and Turkey) which will be extremely instructive and will determine whether or not there is and can be a Moderate Islam. That is the topic for a future post.
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