The Enemy Has a Name

If you cannot name your enemy, how can you defeat it? Just as a physician must identify a disease before curing a patient, so a strategist must identify the foe before winning a war. Yet Westerners have proven reluctant to identify the opponent in the conflict the U.S. government variously (and euphemistically) calls the "global war on terror," the "long war," the "global struggle against violent extremism," or even the "global struggle for security and progress."

This timidity translates into an inability to define war goals. Two high-level U.S. statements from late 2001 typify the vague and ineffective declarations issued by Western governments. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defined victory as establishing "an environment where we can in fact fulfill and live [our] freedoms." In contrast, George W. Bush announced a narrower goal, "the defeat of the global terror network" – whatever that undefined network might be.

"Defeating terrorism" has, indeed, remained the basic war goal. By implication, terrorists are the enemy and counterterrorism is the main response.

But observers have increasingly concluded that terrorism is just a tactic, not an enemy. Bush effectively admitted this much in mid-2004, acknowledging that "We actually misnamed the war on terror." Instead, he called the war a "struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world."

A year later, in the aftermath of the 7/7 London transport bombings, British prime minister Tony Blair advanced the discussion by speaking of the enemy as "a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam." Soon after, Bush himself used the terms "Islamic radicalism," "militant Jihadism," and "Islamo-fascism." But these words prompted much criticism and he backtracked.

By mid-2007, Bush had reverted to speaking about "the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East." That is where things now stand, with U.S. government agencies being advised to refer to the enemy with such nebulous terms as "death cult," "cult-like," "sectarian cult," and "violent cultists."

In fact, that enemy has a precise and concise name: Islamism, a radical utopian version of Islam. Islamists, adherents of this well funded, widespread, totalitarian ideology, are attempting to create a global Islamic order that fully applies the Islamic law (Shari‘a).

Thus defined, the needed response becomes clear. It is two-fold: vanquish Islamism and help Muslims develop an alternative form of Islam. Not coincidentally, this approach roughly parallels what the allied powers accomplished vis-à-vis the two prior radical utopian movements, fascism and communism.

First comes the burden of defeating an ideological enemy. As in 1945 and 1991, the goal must be to marginalize and weaken a coherent and aggressive ideological movement, so that it no longer attracts followers nor poses a world-shaking threat. World War II, won through blood, steel, and atomic bombs, offers one model for victory, the Cold War, with its deterrence, complexity, and nearly-peaceful collapse, offers quite another.

Victory against Islamism, presumably, will draw on both these legacies and mix them into a novel brew of conventional war, counterterrorism, counterpropaganda, and many other strategies. At one end, the war effort led to the overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan; at the other, it requires repelling the lawful Islamists who work legitimately within the educational, religious, media, legal, and political arenas.

The second goal involves helping Muslims who oppose Islamist goals and wish to offer an alternative to Islamism's depravities by reconciling Islam with the best of modern ways. But such Muslims are weak, being but fractured individuals who have only just begun the hard work of researching, communicating, organizing, funding, and mobilizing.

To do all this more quickly and effectively, these moderates need non-Muslim encouragement and sponsorship. However unimpressive they may be at present, moderates, with Western support, alone hold the potential to modernize Islam, and thereby to terminate the threat of Islamism.

In the final analysis, Islamism presents two main challenges to Westerners: To speak frankly and to aim for victory. Neither comes naturally to the modern person, who tends to prefer political correctness and conflict resolution, or even appeasement. But once these hurdles are overcome, the Islamist enemy's objective weakness in terms of arsenal, economy, and resources means it can readily be defeated.

I agree 99.9% with Pipes. The .1% where I disagree is with his optimism that Islam can become compatible with democracy. As long as Sufis and reformists maintain their belief in Muhammad as a prophet and rely on the Qur’an, they will remain in opposition to the West and to democracy, human rights, and individual freedom. Let me know when Muhammad and his Qur’an are denied by them.

Yet Westerners have proven reluctant to identify the opponent in the conflict the U.S. government variously (and euphemistically) calls the "global war on terror," the "long war," the "global struggle against violent extremism," or even the "global struggle for security and progress."

We can win a war against terror as easily as we can win a war against poverty.

The only war that can be won (in this world) is a war against a state or principality that is actively backing, whether through material or moral support, a terrorist organization that has already conducted or intends to conduct illegal acts of violence, murder, and destruction against the United States, its government, its citizens and its residents, and its commercial interests.

The closest that President Bush has gotten to naming true enemies of the United States is in his "axis of evil" speech.

al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, if acting alone, are nought but common criminals. However, it's highly unlikely that they are even capable of acting independent of assistance from foreign States. We need to stop playing word games, shed the political correctness, and start prominently naming those States that are materially and morally supporting various terrorists with whom we are in conflict, and go make war on them.

As for struggles against ideologies and religions such as Islam, that's something for the spiritual realm.

by reconciling Islam with the best of modern ways.

You would be asking Muslims to turn their back on Allah and to collaborate with Infidels for a worldly gain. I can't think of anything more offensive to Allah.

That might work with secular minded people, but not with religious oriented people.- Tom

Doubtful. The philosophy is gaining strength in arsenal, economy and resources. The hurdles mentioned to be "overcome" are the pillars of the new philosophers.

The basic problem is that Islamism is pretty much indistinguishable from Islam. The doctrines preached by terrorist Imams today can be found in the Koran and the earliest writings.

From time to time Muslims seem to take a rest, but sooner or later they are on the attack again. That has been the case for 1400 years. The only reason it went on the back burner is that the Turks were on the losting side of the First World War, and Muslims in general lacked the weapons, money, and technology needed to fight the overwhelming power of the West.

But now they have money, they have arms, and they have the Multi-culti, defeatist, political correctness of their enemies to work with. They are going at it full-bore, stealth jihad and open jihad, and the danger will continue to grow as long as they see immanent victory in their Jihad against the infidels.

Why should they quit when they seem to be winning? It’s the same dynamic world-wide that we have seen on a smaller scale against Israel. If violence and infiltration advance their cause, then that is bound to result in more violence.

In other words, it’s even worse than Daniel Pipes suggests.

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