An idea whose time has come? (Pat Buchanan)

In 1938, the year of Anschluss and Munich, a perceptive British Catholic looked beyond the continent over which war clouds hung and saw another cloud forming.

"It has always seemed to me ... probable," wrote Hilaire Belloc, "that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent."

Belloc was prophetic. Even as Christianity seems to be dying in Europe, Islam is rising to shake the 21st century as it did so many previous centuries.

Indeed, as one watches U.S. armed forces struggle against Sunni insurgents, Shia militias and Jihadists in Iraq, and a resurgent Taliban, all invoking Allah, Victor Hugo's words return to mind: No army is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

The idea for which our many of our adversaries fight is a compelling one. They believe there is but one God, Allah, that Muhammad is his prophet, that Islam, or submission to the Quran, is the only path to paradise and that a Godly society should be governed according to the Sharia, the law of Islam. Having tried other ways and failed, they are coming home to Islam.

What idea do we have to offer? Americans believe that freedom comports with human dignity, that only a democratic and free-market system can ensure the good life for all, as it has done in the West and is doing in Asia.

From Ataturk on, millions of Islamic peoples have embraced this Western alternative. But today, tens of millions of Muslims appear to be rejecting it, returning to their roots in a more pure Islam.

Islam survived two centuries of defeats and humiliations of the Ottoman Empire and Ataturk's abolition of the caliphate. It endured generations of Western rule. It outlasted the pro-Western monarchs in Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Ethiopia and Iran. Islam easily fended off communism, survived the rout of Nasserism in 1967 and has proven more enduring than the nationalism of Arafat or Saddam. Now, it is resisting the world's last superpower.

What occasioned this column was a jolting report in the June 20 Washington Times, by James Brandon, alerting us to a new front.

"Arrests Spark Fear of Armed Islamist Takeover" headlined the story about the arrest, since May, of 500 militants who had allegedly plotted the overthrow of the king of Morocco and establishment of an Islamic state that would sever all ties to the infidel West -- to end the poverty and corruption they blame on the West.

The arrests raised fears that Al Adl wa al Ihsane, or Justice and Charity, was preparing to take up arms to fulfill the predictions of the group's mystics that the monarchy would fall in 2006. Though illegal, Al Adl wa al Ihsane is Morocco's largest Islamic movement, which boycotts elections, but has hundreds of thousands of followers and has taken over the universities and is radicalizing the young.

Its founder is Sheik Abdessalam Yassine, who has declared its purpose is to reunite mosque and state: "Politics and spirituality have been kept apart by the Arab elites. And we have been able to reconnect these two aspects of Islam -- and that is why people fear us."

If Morocco is now in play in the struggle between militant Islam and the West, how looks the correlation of forces in June 2006?

Islamists are taking over in Somalia. They are in power in Sudan. The Muslim Brotherhood won 60 percent of the races it contested in Egypt. Hezbollah swept the board in southern Lebanon. Hamas seized power from Fatah on the West Bank and Gaza. The Shia parties who hearken to Ayatollah Sistani brushed aside our favorites, Chalabi and Iyad Allawi, in the Iraqi elections. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most admired Iranian leader since Khomeini. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is staging a comeback.

What is the appeal of militant Islam? It is, first, its message: As all else has failed us, why not live the faith and law God gave us?

Second, it is the Muslim rage at the present condition where pro-Western regimes are seen as corruptly enriching themselves, while the poor suffer.

Third, it is a vast U.S. presence that Islamic peoples are taught is designed to steal their God-given resources and assist the Israelis in humiliating them and persecuting the Palestinians.

Lastly, Islamic militants are gaining credibility because they show a willingness to share the poverty of the poor and fight the Americans.

What America needs to understand is something unusual for us: From Morocco to Pakistan, we are no longer seen by the majority as the good guys.

If Islamic rule is an idea taking hold among the Islamic masses, how does even the best army on earth stop it? Do we not need a new policy?

1. End our reliance on oil.

Can be done and will be done within our lifetime. Advances in technology in extrapolating energy from fuel cell technology (at the moment, we really need more nuclear power to do this), to say nothing of designing engines that can run on ethanol in cold climates and more efficiently in general(the latter, along with the high cost of corn and soybeans, is currently mitigating against this). It all depends on how much cost per gallon for petrol the American consumer can stand. We've just been spoiled with CHEAP and plentiful oil for most of our history.

2. Stop the expansion of Islam in Europe.

Not much we Americans can do here. If the rest of Europe follows the example of the Dutch, the problem can be contained.

3. Contain Islam in the Muslim countries. I can see this happening in Iran (which has a rapidly secularizing urban population), Turkey (where, contrary to paranoia from the European far right, it has been contained), and Pakistan (if the Generals ever embraced free market economics and cracked some skulls at the Madrasses), to say nothing of Indonesia. Don't see much happening in the Gulf States unless the price of oil plummets and the Wahabists lose their main source of income.

4. Kill any Islamists who attack us.

If only we had the will to ignore the media and the Europeans, this could be done with little backlash at home. There is also the matter of placating the Saudis, which has been Foggy Bottom's stock in trade since the fall of the Ottomans (Grrrr!).

5. Keep the Islamic world divided and weak. VERY easy. Easier than most "Middle East Experts" in the press/academia and Foggy Bottom think. As we have seen most recently in Iraq, even WITHIN Shi'a Islam, any sort of long term unity is impossible. Lets also not forget the strong ethnic rivalries/hatreds which preclude religious unity (of the 20 or so folks from Iran I have met in my life, NONE, religious or secular, thought of the Arabs as anything more than camel sh-t. I'm sure the Arabs have similar feelings towards the Persians).

6. Keep Muslim countries militarily weak.

Let's give credit where credit is due in the administration for keeping Pakistan's ambitions in check and for keeping the pressure on Iran. Even in cases where we give considerable aid to Islamic states, the results are not impressive. I mean, is anyone out there REALLY afraid of losing a war to Egypt? NATO-member Turkey could probably defeat the Greeks, but I don't see that happening barring a 180 in eastern mediterranean geopolitics. 2. Stop the expansion of Islam in Europe. 3. Contain Islam in the Muslim countries. 4. Kill any Islamists who attack us. 5. Keep the Islamic world divided and weak. 6. Keep Muslim countries militarily weak.

"Paddy has the gift of gab and no realistic answers as usual. His third party kind gave us Carter and Clinton."

On the other hand, if you believe some of the speculation surrounding the 2000 election, he caused Bush to win. One of the districts in Florida with a higher than typical (relative to the national average) jewish population also had a higher than average vote share for Buchanan's Reform party. Some said the style of the ballot confused some voters, and resulted in people misintentionally voting for him. I believe he said something to the effect that he doubted that result, also. I wonder if he thinks about it much now, given that the dreaded Bush has two terms.

"While most would today recoil from proposals to answer a future 9-11 with, say, the erasure of Tehran, such reservations will evaporate with the next act of mega-terrorism in the U.S."

The problem with that is, what would be the appropriate response if the perpetrators were born in the US? Which country to strike in retaliation? So-called homegrowns have the advantage of being protected by the same laws as anyone else, but it also clouds the issue as to who is responsible.

When there was the threat of war with the Soviets, it was understood that a pre-emptive nuclear attack would be met with equally lethal nukes in return. With a divided muslim "ummah," who's in charge over there? Their advantage is that their religious schooling and centres for radicalising are all over the place, in many countries, including western Europe. Do bombs get dropped on them, too, if a nuke goes off in America? All this is to say, at least when the Soviets were threatening invasion, we all knew where we stood, and what the response would be. Mutually assured destruction, as a regulating concept, is gone.

Best, I say, would be for strong leadership to spell out which cities (ie. Mecca, Medina, Tehran, etc) would be wiped out automatically, if a catastrophic attack were to happen here at home. The concept needs to be put out there.

What I don't get is why his counterparts in western Europe, those who are conservative and who deal with a more present Islamic threat, aren't as concerned as perhaps we would be in the same situation. The LePen movement wants to deport what they call Africans back to northern Africa. It's talked about as an issue of race, whereas it's about competiting civilisations. The one propounded by the immigrants and their descendants is that of Arab supremecy, and their religion. I don't get why the focus is on race animus.

Maybe it's tactical. Maybe Le Pen feels it can only get elected by appealing to the famous snobbery and bigotry of the French people. Or maybe Le Pen is of that mindset itself and the only way it can address Islam is on deplorable racial grounds. It may be emotionally and intellectually incapable of addressing Islam via means of its Qu'ran and culture.

500 militants who had allegedly plotted the overthrow of the king of Morocco and establishment of an Islamic state that would sever all ties to the infidel West -- to end the poverty and corruption they blame on the West.

Excuse me? Some of the richest countries on this earth are purportedly ISLAMIC countries; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar. If their people, with the exception of the ruling class, are in dire poverty, they have no one to blame but themselves.

I believe that Islam is so 'popular' among such poor countries because people have been taught for centuries that they are to submit to the Will of Allah, and if they are poor, it must be because Allah wills it.

Because their rulers keep them ignorant, and because their Mullahs are not just religious, but political leaders, they are also easily manipulated into believing that the West is working against them, and that it is also Allah's Will that the West be destroyed. They don't understand that even if the West were destroyed, their lot in life wouldn't change, they just accept what their rulers say because they have always done so, and they know no other way to live.

The interesting aspect of this essay is the highlighting of the radicalization of the arab world. The radicals will have to follow up on their rhetoric, the death cult will do what it has done consistently for the last 1400 years, and we will be forced settle this once and for all -- Asian and Western civilization against arab/Islamic barbarism.

Spot on. Now why do you think Christians have been branded as radicals by the Liberal Left?

1: because we are not Muslim, 2: because we, too believe in something.

In the absence of a moral high ground in the war of ideas, anything goes, which suits the Liberals' dhimmitude just fine. After all, they are slaves to their lusts, why not Islam?

But the liberals are doing all they can to undermine Christian Ethos, and in the end, that is the hammerblow which will forge their chains should they succeed in doing so. (They won't, but they will take many with them). And all the while they will wail and pass blame on to the selfsame institutions they now undermine as vigorously as possible.

Frank T wrote:

He never quites let go, does he?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why should he?.. Much of what he has to say about Islam is common knowledge, as the words below prove:

"-- This Is a Religious War -- September 11 was Only the Beginning --"

"-- The religious dimension of this conflict is central to its meaning.

The words of Osama bin Laden are saturated with religious argument and theological language. Whatever else the Taliban regime is in Afghanistan, it is fanatically religious. Although some Muslim leaders have criticized the terrorists, and even Saudi Arabia's rulers have distanced themselves from the militants, other Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere have not denounced these acts, have been conspicuously silent or have indeed celebrated them.

The terrorists' strain of Islam is clearly not shared by most Muslims and is deeply unrepresentative of Islam's glorious, civilized and peaceful past.
But it surely represents a part of Islam -- a radical, fundamentalist part -- that simply cannot be ignored or denied.

This use of religion for extreme repression, and even terror, is not of course restricted to Islam.

It seems almost as if there is something inherent in religious monotheism that lends itself to this kind of terrorist temptation. And our bland attempts to ignore this -- to speak of this violence as if it did not have religious roots -- is some kind of denial. We don't want to denigrate religion as such, and so we deny that religion is at the heart of this. But we would understand this conflict better, perhaps, if we first acknowledged that religion is responsible in some way, and then figured out how and why.

The first mistake is surely to condescend to fundamentalism. We may disagree with it, but it has attracted millions of adherents for centuries, and for a good reason. It elevates and comforts. It provides a sense of meaning and direction to those lost in a disorienting world. The blind recourse to texts embraced as literal truth, the injunction to follow the commandments of God before anything else, the subjugation of reason and judgment and even conscience to the dictates of dogma: these can be exhilarating and transformative. They have led human beings to perform extraordinary acts of both good and evil.
And they have an internal logic to them.
If you believe that there is an eternal afterlife and that endless indescribable torture awaits those who disobey God's law, then it requires no huge stretch of imagination to make sure that you not only conform to each diktat but that you also encourage and, if necessary, coerce others to do the same. The logic behind this is impeccable.
Sin begets sin.
The sin of others can corrupt you as well. The only solution is to construct a world in which such sin is outlawed and punished and constantly purged -- by force if necessary.

It is not crazy to act this way if you believe these things strongly enough. In some ways, it's crazier to believe these things and not act this way.

In a world of absolute truth, in matters graver than life and death, there is no room for dissent and no room for theological doubt. Hence the reliance on literal interpretations of texts -- because interpretation can lead to error, and error can lead to damnation.
Hence also the ancient Catholic insistence on absolute church authority. Without infallibility, there can be no guarantee of truth. Without such a guarantee, confusion can lead to hell. --"

I find your point of view to be quite interesting. I hadn't thought of it in quite that way before. Having been raised a Roman Catholic, and then transitioning to radical leftist to libertarian leftist to constitutionalist/libertarian/Republican, and now having read the Koran, I think you have made a very compelling case.

Buchanan suggests we need a new policy. But what? Force, conciliation, or some combination of the two seem to me to be the only options possible. So Pat thinks there should be less force and more conciliation? Force applied in other places and conciliation where we have applied force? If so, where? None of the critics will say. They merely throw bombs at the current WOT in search of constituents.

Are you saying that all neoconservatives are Jewish? Are you saying that criticizing neoconservatives is a form of antisemitism? Are you saying that Jews who criticize neoconservatives are self-hating Jews?

Actually, the word the Paleos use is neocon. It is like the [k word] (the k word is an abbreviation by Jew haters of the yiddish Keikel for circle because Jews used to sign their immigration forms with a circle). This attempt of the Paleos to deceitfully disguise their anti-Semitism, just as their Nazi heroes disguised the gas chambers as disenfectant showers, is unforgivable and makes them and their admirers low, animal scum.

If we need a new approach to Islam, as Pat says, why doesn't Pat spell out what that new approach is? Is it because he doesn't have the guts to say that the zionist entity should be destroyed? And once the 5.5 million Jews of the zionist entity are killed, then all will be right with the Arabs vis a vis the West? Of course, that is what he means, but he doesn't even have the honesty when it comes to that or his attempt to use the anti word neocon to disguise his hatred of the Jews. Pat's at war with the Jews, whom he calls neo cons (the new [k word]), and he doesn't even have the decency to admit it.

On Thursday a caller to Bill Bennett's program tried to share with BIll what Pershing did. The caller was cut off because Bill was afraid of offending the sensibilities of his audience.

I'd like to see an investigation by reading about Black Jack Pershing whether this is or is not an urban myth. I think we might need to do a little more examination than just reading Snopes about the issue, but I know from an Islamic cleric that the body of the shahid; i.e., terrorist/so-called martyr, does not need to be cleaned as in ordinary Islamic burial, so this Pershing story may not really pan out.

We don't want to spout ignorant things as our enemies do.

If Islamic rule is an idea taking hold among the Islamic masses, how does even the best army on earth stop it? Do we not need a new policy?

1. End our reliance on oil. Excellent idea -- Substantial $$$ should have been invested in developing alternative fuels after the oil crisis in 1974. But far too many US and Euro oil companies have prevented this from happening because it is not in their interests. We've got an oil guy in the White House right now, so what do you think our chances are of coming up with that kind of solution in the short-term?

2. Stop the expansion of Islam in Europe. Another excellent idea, but how? There are already enough Muslims in Europe to cause problems. Think of France a few months ago. And Muslims breed at a far higher rate than the rest of us, so wherever they are now, we'll be dealing with 5-10 that number over the next twenty years -- and they will be home-grown citizens!

3. Contain Islam in the Muslim countries. Again, how? You think that its tough to control a land border like Mexico, then imagine water borders like those between Southern Europe and Africa -- not like you can just "build a wall" on your entire coastline. In countries like Greece, with hundreds of islands, you are completely screwed. But once inside Greece, they are in the EU and home-free.

4. Kill any Islamists who attack us. You going to wait for them to "attack us" first? That's what we are already doing, these bastards aren't afraid to die -- or even kill themselves in the attack!

5. Keep the Islamic world divided and weak. Again, that is what we are already doing -- or are attempting to do -- and that has produced the likes of Al Qaeda. It's a whole lot easier to fight a war with "a country" than it is to fight "an Islamic movement" with no country and virtually every country in the Islamic world for shelter. We are trying to divide Muslim countries while Al Qaeda is actually uniting them.

6. Keep Muslim countries militarily weak Again, we can kick the ass of virtually any country in ME and even several at once if we have to. That isn't the problem. A "country" is a stable target for attack, a "movement" with members from multiple countries is not! If we are dealing with a stable target and an organized military, we can win. If we are dealing with a movement, with no country, and no formal military which is gaining steam every time they succcessfully attack us and every time we attack them, we are screwed!

This is the result of a foreign policy based on hatred of Jews neoconservatives.""""

Please explain. If somebody - like me - doesn't support the war in Iraq, why does that translate into "hatred of Jews"? Does John Paul II "hate Jews"? He opposed the US invasion of Iraq. Does Tom Clancy "hate Jews"? He opposed the invasion of Iraq. Does Wm F Buckley "hate Jews"? He now says he would have opposed it if he'd known then what he knows now - i.e., that Iraq wasn't a threat to the US. Why smear people with "hate Jews" label, simply because they disagree with you on a policy issue? Jesse Jackson likes to smear people as racists if they disagree with him on this or that. Too bad there are conservatives - or people who think they're conservatives - who've adopted a similar tactic.

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