Fighting the Ideological War (islam, the real war!)

We aren’t fighting a war against terrorists to win the hearts and minds of the Middle East. We are fighting it to end the threat of terrorism. Victory can’t be achieved with bullets and bombs alone. This is, at its core, an ideological war. Just as we defeated communism by defeating the communists’ ideology, we need to attack and destroy that of the radical Islamists.

To do that, we first have to understand that radical Islam – the Islam of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Usama bin Laden and the rest – isn’t a religion. It is an ideology that cobbles totalitarianism together with a messianic vision of religious nationalism. Radical Islam (unlike the actual religion) tolerates no other religion, and demands that its adherents give up the basic human freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights. No freedom of speech, no free press, no fair trials by a jury of your peers, only enslavement. Like the Nazis, the radical Islamists play on the sense of persecution and cultural inferiority that many people in underdeveloped nations have because they are truly oppressed. And, like the Nazis, the Islamists have convinced their followers that the problems of their world are the fault of others. The Islamists blame every ill of their world on America, the West, the Jews and Israel. Like the Soviets, the Islamists believe that their enslavement of the world is inevitable (though, unlike the Soviets, they believe it is God’s will that they must succeed). Its adherents, like the Nazis and the Communists before them, believe their victory is both inevitable and irreversible. That is a powerful ideology which we have yet to engage with the necessary weapons.

We fought the Soviet ideology from 1946 to 1989. In those years, we rode our own ideological roller coaster. For many Americans – and many more Europeans, Africans and others around the world – the only weapon in that ideological battle was self-criticism. They were willing to confuse healthy criticism of our own system of government with praise for the Soviet counterparts. They were even willing to deny the horrific repressions, mass murder and subjugation by force of other peoples.

The Soviet ideology was defeated, and the Cold War won, by the Soviets’ self-imposed poverty, our military buildup, and by the fact that we proved to the world – by objective comparison – that their enslavement of people was inferior to our freedoms. It was neither fashionable nor even polite conversation to say, as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did relentlessly, that our system of freedom was objectively superior to Soviet oppression. That constant ideological pounding, coupled with the physical courage and intellectual mastery of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and Lech Walesa, won the ideological battle of the Cold War. We have to do the same in this war, and in much the same way.

Our military – comprised of many of the best people our country has ever produced – is winning every fight it enters. But it can’t win the war alone. Our politicians have to do that by fighting the ideological war. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Peter Pace, understands this better than any of our pols. In his “guidance” to the Joint Staff, published right after he took the job, Pace said that, “Our enemies are violent extremists who would deny us, and all mankind, the freedom to choose our own destiny. Finding this distributed, loosely networked enemy is the greatest challenge we face. We must find and defeat them in an environment where information, perception, and how and what we communicate are every bit as critical as the application of traditional kinetic effects.” So how do we do it?

President Bush needs to lead us in the ideological fight just as Ronald Reagan did in the Cold War. We need to hear from him – and the rest of our leaders – the kind of blunt comparisons we heard from Reagan. Radical Islam enslaves people. It robs them of the inalienable rights endowed by their creator that our Declaration of Independence described, and our Constitution protects. Our society is as prosperous as any in the world, and that is a direct result of the freedoms we enjoy. Radical Islam condemns its adherents and its slaves to poverty and suffering. And the nations that support it are our enemies.

We have the ability to tell right from wrong and good from evil and there is no need for us to apologize for that. Nor should we twist our relations with other countries to suit some false moral equivalence. Those who say, for example, that if India or Israel can have nuclear weapons why shouldn’t Iran are guilty of illogic. It is permissible for us, and the rest of the free world, to say that some countries are evil and others are not, and to condition our relations with them all on the basis of our own judgment. To deliver that judgment, and act upon it, is the job of the president.

In time of war, the President of the United States has to be the boldest spokesman for freedom in the world. President Bush needs to be fighting this ideological battle with all the energy and relentlessness of a Marine sergeant assaulting a bunch of terrorists holed up in a cave. In the Cold War, Ronald Reagan stood fast, and spoke clearly without fear of offending the enemy because he knew that a war between ideologies cannot be fought with soft words and euphemisms. What was true for the Cold War is no less true today. It’s not enough to say that we fight tyranny. It is essential to say that we fight for what is right, and what is by any measure better than the enemy will ever deliver to even its most loyal followers.

Mr. Babbin is a former Deputy UnderSecretary of Defense (Bush 41) and now Contributing Editor of FamilySecurityMatters.

Amen! Right on! It is a war of words, of ideology! I can well remember right after 9-11 saying to a friend of mine," All right, now we'll say it; The way of the West is better. Our way is better." None of this stupid pretending that reasonable minds could differ on this question. No! Western, American Democracy IS a better way. Period. And we will say so and we will expand it.

I do, however, disagree with the following statement.

...radical Islam – the Islam of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Usama bin Laden and the rest – isn’t a religion.

IMO, the question of whether the islam of Ahmadinejad and OBL and others like them is a religion depends on whether they believe they are agents of their deity...and all the evidence suggests they do.

President Bush needs to be fighting this ideological battle with all the energy and relentlessness of a Marine sergeant assaulting a bunch of terrorists holed up in a cave. In the Cold War, Ronald Reagan stood fast, and spoke clearly without fear of offending the enemy because he knew that a war between ideologies cannot be fought with soft words and euphemisms.

There can be no distinction between "Radical Islam" and "Islam". The key word here is still Islam. A better term is "Islamic Fundamentalists" since it is only faithful Muslims who become terrorists. Islam is rotten at the core and so it bears rotten fruit. The distinction should be made in the comparison between the basis of its morality vs. the basis for the morality in other religions and political ideologies.

Islam, like leftism, Nazism, fascism, communism, totalitarianism, atheism, Satanism, hedonism, etc., operates under the ideology of "moral relativism" and not "the golden rule". The golden rule is the basis of just about every major religion and free political system since it is based on the premise of “treat others as you would want to be treated”. Mohammed on the other hand declared that everyone should do as he and his alter ego (Allah) said or else, even if it be wrong or evil. As long as it was for Allah then it was morally justified in his warped view.

We as a people will continue to fight the symptoms of evil unless we become determined to fight the root cause of it. Just as Islamic terrorism is a symptom of Islam itself, so too is Islam a symptom of moral relativism.

We as a people will continue to fight the symptoms of evil unless we become determined to fight the root cause of it. Just as Islamic terrorism is a symptom of Islam itself, so too is Islam a symptom of moral relativism.

Very true in every way but one. I am not exactly what you mean when you say islam is a symptom of moral relativism.

"Radical Islam (unlike the actual religion) tolerates no other religion"

Good article except for that line. Islam is Islam. There is no fundamental difference between the radical version and the less radical ideology. Less radical Muslims are simply less inclined to kill. That is a good thing, but it doesn't mean they are any less intent on creating a world wide Muslim state.

If anyone has illusions that democracy, freedom of speech, or freedom of religion will continue once Muslims become a majority in any given country, they need only look at the situation in countries where they already hold the majority.

Islam is inherently intolerant. Any Muslim that does tolerate those practicing a different religion are not true Muslims.

Saying that moderate Muslims are "good Muslims" is like saying that moderate Nazis are "good Nazis" or moderate Communists are "good Communists".

Any ideology that requires its adherents to be intolerant of those with different ideologies is an ideology that kills. At the risk of stating the obvious, Islam is such an ideology.

Finding this distributed, loosely networked enemy is the greatest challenge we face.

The leaders of this fascist ideology are its clerics, and they can be found in the mosques. Infiltration of the mosques in the Western world should be a relatively easy thing to do, and hopefully it is being done.

You wrote: "I am not exactly what you mean when you say Islam is a symptom of moral relativism."

- In Islam, the basic moral value is to "do what Mohammed said and did (regardless if evil) and not what is true or good"

In western society, murder is murder, it doesn't matter the reason. In Islam murder is relative. If you kill a Jew it is sanctioned by Mohammed and Allah in the Koran so therefore it is not murder in the eyes of Muslims but divine providence. In other words, truth takes a back seat to religion and religious dogma. Truth becomes relative and able to be rationalized away in favor of pleasing Allah and Mohammed. This type of thinking is called moral relativism.

Here is a decent primer article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4460673.stm

Thx...this is the first time I have seen "moral relativism" applied to islam (muslims for the most part view islam as being very specific regarding morality).

Thx for the link, good reading.

Will need to mull this over.

"Thx for the link, good reading."

- Your welcome and good hunting. I'm sure you will notice in your search that many of the ideologies we consider to be wrong or evil have in fact this moral relativism as their primary ethic structure. Nazism, Communism, Leftism, etc. Scary stuff.

Thx...I read that earlier today and thought it a coincidence that it spoke of the same issue you had raised earlier. That is an excellent article...I thought of posting it on FR but thought it might be too academic to get much attention.

I appreciate your keeping me in mind.

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