Know The Enemy (And What He Believes)[BRILLIANT David Horowitz Article]

THE WAR WE HAVE joined is defined by three simple but brutal facts. Our enemy is able to penetrate our borders and strike us in our homes; he can strike us with weapons of mass destruction; and he has made clear his intention is not to change our policies or to force our withdrawal, but to obliterate us and destroy our civilization. Because of these facts, the imperative of defending ourselves as quickly and effectively as possible is more important in this war – by a factor so great as to be impossible to calculate -- than any we have ever fought.

In all wars the first essential is to know your enemy. Everything you can do to thwart his objectives or to protect your life and the lives of your countrymen depends on this knowledge. But if the war is a war of terror, in which stealth warriors target civilians, the importance of this knowledge is even greater still –again by a factor so large as to be impossible to calculate.

Who, then, is the enemy that has struck us and who threatens our destruction? Officially he has been defined in terms that invoke "terror" and "evil," that are generic and that really describe the means by which he has chosen to fight the war, and not why he is fighting or how we have become his enemy. They do not tell us who he is. This failure to name our enemy is already a source of great weakness in erecting our defenses. This ignorance is the most pressing danger to us, after the threat itself. Already, in attempting to establish security perimeters at our borders, and in our airports and harbors, we have denied ourselves the ability to target the specific groups who have targeted us. The policy that will not identify the enemy by name is a policy that asks us to fight in the dark. Yet every terrorist who slips through these nets is capable of killing tens of thousands of innocent Americans.

Yet, we already know who our enemy is, no matter how many choose to deny it. Almost a year has passed since the attacks on Wall Street and the Pentagon -- the twin symbols of American wealth and power. We have seen the face of the enemy, even if we are still reluctant to name him.

We are at war with radical Islam (not all of Islam but with Islamic radicals). And we are – or should be – at war with their allies, the international radical left. Both see us as the embodiment of evil – racism, oppression, on the one hand, and the frustrations of Islamic societies on the other. Both, therefore, seek our destruction.

The publication of a new al-Qaeda manifesto, translated by the Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI) makes its agendas abundantly clear. The statement called, "Why We Fight America," and was issued by al-Qaeda spokesman, Suleiman Abu Gheith and appeared on an al-Qaeda website hosted by Center for Islamic Research and Studies.

The al-Qaeda statement begins by asking why the world is surprised by what happened on 9/11 – pretty much the question that Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Edward Said, Barbara Kingsolver, Arundhati Roy and sundry professors at anti-American rallies on college campuses across the country asked within weeks of the horrific attack. And the answer is pretty much the same for both as well:

"What happened to America [on 9/11] is something natural, an expected event for a country that uses terror, arrogant policy, and suppression against the nations and the peoples, and imposes a single method, thought, and way of life, as if the people of the entire world are clerks in its government offices and employed by its commercial companies and institutions."

Anyone who was surprised by 9/11, the al-Qaeda statement continues, does not understand the root causes of the attack and in particular "the effects of oppression and tyranny on [the victims’] emotions and feelings." Instead, such people must think, "that oppression begets surrender, that repression begets silence, that tyranny leaves only humiliation."

In fact, according to al-Qaeda, humiliation, deprivation and oppression inspire righteous rage against the oppressor. And this righteous indignation is what al-Qaeda’s war is about. Of course, unlike the Western left, al-Qaeda does not wage its war in the name of an international proletariat and its goal is not a secular socialist utopia. Al-Qaeda’s war is about the future world reign of Islam. The al-Qaeda statement asks: How can a Muslim accept humiliation and inferiority "when he knows that his nation was created to stand at the center of leadership, at the center of hegemony and rule, at the center of ability and sacrifice? … When he knows that the [divine] rule is that the entire earth must be subject to the religion of Allah – not to the East, not to the West – to no ideology and to no path except the path of Allah?…"

Credulous apostles of appeasement in the West like Ted Turner and Cherie Blair (wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair) are so superior in their own minds to the Muslims who hate them that they don’t consider the possibility that the Islamic faithful could actually mean what they say. Justifying Arafat’s suicide brigades, Blair said, "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress." This is an inanity heard nightly on cable talk shows from the left. It is the propaganda line of Machiavellian spokesmen for the terrorist cause like PLO spokesman Abudl Rachman and westernized apologists like Hussein Ibish who equate the terrorists’ terror with the victims’ response. But it ignores what the combatants say about themselves and their inspiration, and patronizes them in the process.

The Middle East Research Institute has also translated an interview given to the Arab press by a mother of a suicide bomber, who has nothing to say about root causes like poverty, or thwarted national desires or "social injustice." (Indeed when the al-Qaeda spokesman speaks of his "nation" he clearly means the entire world of Islam, and not any particular state whether Afghanistan or Palestine or Saudia Arabia or Iraq.) What she says is this:

The will to genocide is not specific to the martyrs who blow up little children, but is shared by the community of radical Islam. It comes not from despair, but from a hope of heaven – from extending the territory of Islam and doing Allah’s will. Nothing could be more obvious to anyone paying attention. That is, to anyone paying attention without the screen of liberal arrogance, which denies what it has seen in order to explain it. And thereby understand it. And thereby surrender to it.

The hope for heaven – or for the global reign of Islam as the path to heaven -- is generically the same fanatical inspiration that caused believers in socialism (a heaven on earth) to kill tens of millions of innocent unbelievers during the 20th Century. It is the same faith that causes progressive fellow travelers like Ted Turner, Barbara Kingsolver and Edward Said to support the agendas of America’s enemies. And of perverse America-haters, like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky to support any anti-American war.

The present war against us may be about humiliation and a sense of inferiority stemming from Islam’s centuries of eclipse, but it is not about despair. The new statement from al-Qaeda is not addressed to people who have nothing. Quite the opposite It is an incitement to people who have something -- and who might be reluctant to give up what they have -- to sacrifice life itself for the glory of Islam: "As long as the Muslim knows and believes … he will not – even for a single moment -- stop trying to achieve [the universal triumph of Islam], even if it costs him his soul…his time, his property and his son, ..."

This is not a war about land in the Middle East or the structure of a Palestinian state, or a U.S. military presence in the Arabian peninsula. It is a war about redemption. In this it exactly parallels the Communist threat from the past. In the eyes of the Communists, America stood in the way of heaven – a socialist paradise in which racism, sexism, and economic inequality would vanish from the earth. In the eyes of radical Islam, America -- the Great Satan -- stands in the way of Islam’s rule, and thus of human redemption and it is for this reason America must be destroyed.

Thus, the al-Qaeda proclamation: "America is the head of heresy in our modern world, and it leads an infidel democratic regime that is based upon separation of religion and state and on ruling the people by the people via legislating laws that contradict the way of Allah and permit what Allah has prohibited. This compels the other countries to act in accordance with the same laws in the same ways … and punishes any country [that rebels against these laws] by besieging it, and then by boycotting it. By so doing [America] seeks to impose on the world a religion that is not Allah’s…"

Americans wake up! Your enemies hate you for who you are. They hate you because you are democratic, and tolerant and unbelieving. They hate you because you are Christians: "America’s standing with the Christians of the world against the Muslims has stripped the camouflague from its face." And they hate you because are Hindus and Buddhists and secularists and Jews.

This war is not a war we are facing. It is a war we are in. Americans have hardly begun to understand this, but the enemy is already keeping score: "We have not reached parity [with America’s alleged attacks on Muslims. [Therefore], we have the right to kill 4 million Americans – 2 million of them children – and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted Muslims because of the [Americans’] chemical and biological weapons."

Americans have also only begun to understand that if radical Islam is one face of our enemy, the other is the radical left. For two hundred years the radical left has believed in a religion promising a heaven on earth whose end justifies any means. That is why progressives like Lenin and Stalin and Pol Pot killed so many innocent people. That is why radical leftists in America and other European countries have joined in denouncing America’s war of self-defense and in abetting the Arab crusade to obliterate Israel and (in the process) exterminate the Jews of the Middle East.

How serious are some American leftists about abetting the war to destroy their own country? Attorney Lynne Stewart is a veteran of the radical left going back to the 1960s and is the lawyer for the "blind sheik" who led the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Six people were killed in the attack and 1,000 injured. Stewart is associated with the Center for Constitutional Rights and has been a supporter of Communist causes and Arab terrorists for her entire professional life. Recently, the Attorney General indicted Stewart for helping the "blind sheik," who is now in prison, to communicate with his terrorist followers in the Middle East and further their bloody agendas.

A chorus from the left has attacked Attorney General Ashcroft for infringing on the civil liberties of the imprisoned terrorist and his "lawyer." Stewart has been defended as a persecuted civil libertarian by the left-wing National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU, The Nation and other institutions of the "progressive" left.

In 1995, Lynne Stewart was interviewed by the New York Times, which reported her radical beliefs. ""Ms. Stewart suggested that violence and revolution were sometimes necessary to right the economic and racial wrongs of America’s capitalist system." Among other things, Lynne Stewart said this: "I don’t believe in anarchistic violence, but in directed violence. That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, and sexism, and the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions, and accompanied by popular support."

The World Trade Center is an institution which perpetuates capitalism and -- in the eyes of the left -- racism and sexism as well. According to every leftist – from the Nation magazine to the Chomsky fifth column (the distance is not great) --, America is a land of capitalism, racism and sexism, and the enforcer of capitalism, racism and sexism globally. This is the world that the Islamicists call Dar Al-Harb: The world of darkness. The world that is not socialist (for the leftist believers) and that is not Islam (for the faithful). According to Lynne Stewart and the al-Qaeda spokesman, the people who dwell in Dar Al-Harb and support its profane agendas deserve to die. This is what the present "war on terror" is about. Americans better understand it sooner than later.

What sensible observations, Poobah. No matter how satisfying it would be to drop the Big One (or a whole bunch of them), it's not a panacea. As the coup de grace against Japan, it made sense.

But blitzing Germany didn't. As the Strategic Bombing Survey found after the war, it stiffened the resistance of the enemy civilian population and slowed the Allies' ground advance by destroying bridges and strewing the advancing victors' path with rubble. Targeted bombing, a la Afghanistan, is the policy that works. Turning Mecca into a pool of black glass, as some Freepers tirelessly urge, would confirm the sand goblins' propaganda.

Our enemy IS radical Islam.

And "radical Islam" is, by definition, a small militant fringe, as representative of all of Islam as the Aztlan freaks are representative of the Hispanic community.

However, indiscriminate bombing of civil populations is a great recipe for radicalizing them.

The trick is to fight this war in a way so that (a) the many Muslims out there who DO admire America continue to do so; (b) the bad guys get wasted; and (c) the ones who lean toward the bad guys get the idea that tinkling in Uncle Sam's Wheaties is really stupid.

Its a fact that also happens to be easily lost in the glare of political correctness and the heat of war.

It's a fact that can get lost very easily in the effort to champion a pet political effort. In the 1990s, EVERYTHING was "for the CHILL-ILL-DRRUUUN!" Now, it's for the "War Against Terrorism."

We must never forget who he is and what he stands for.

The latter being a great deal easier than the former.

That's all we need to know to win the war on terrorism.

Ah, if it were truly that easy...

Knowledge, no matter how perfect, is worthless without action based on that knowledge. And getting a nation as politically split as America to recognize one course of action as the proper one is going to be a challenge.

"This war is not a war we are facing. It is a war we are in. Americans have hardly begun to understand this"

George W. Bush understood this immediately.

When the September 11 massacre occurred, he immediately knew exactly what it meant, and he said so.

Intelligent people of the world understood the significance of his immediate grasp of the situation and were able to comprehend the immense depth and breadth and scope of his intellect, clarity, and leadership ability.

This was the single most reassuring thing after the massacre.

Those capable of comprehending the significance and importance of George Bush's reaction knew that the United States would prevail and that the nation was under the leadership of a brilliant and great man.

Those who did not recognize this or who have not yet are of inferior intellict.

I absolutely disagree. It is the only thing that works. You mean to tell me that if we had not fire bombed Tokyo and followed it up with Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the Japanese would have surrendered?

In 1945, the Japanese government was looking for a way to surrender that wouldn't give the fire-eaters an excuse for overthrowing the government. The atomic bomb gave them that out. However, what made it a safe means of surrender was its newness; that factor no longer works in our favor. Even then, it was still a very near-run thing--the fire-eaters damn near overran the Imperial Palace the night before Hirohito's speech was broadcast.

The presence or absence of the 20th Air Force's firebombing efforts would not have made a significant difference in this equation. The Japanese government knew the war was lost--the question was whether Japan would commit national suicide like the fire-eaters in the Army wanted.

If we had not bombed the major cities of Germany proper that the Nazi's would have just stopped where they were?

The original draft of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (the one that the Air Force burned every copy of to prevent embarrassing news from getting out) concluded that the "Mighty Eighth" and RAF Bomber Command's bombing efforts actually lengthened the war, because (a) they didn't destroy vital industrial targets and (b) convinced the German populace that they were equal partners with the Wehrmacht in fighting the war. It stiffened their resolve considerably.

The first reaction of a person after his neighborhood has been bombed is surely one of anger and outrage. Sooner or later though the most basic law of human nature will prevail; self preservation.

The historical record does not support your contention. A policy of deliberately devastating urban areas has been tried on three separate occasions. On two of those occasions, it was manifestly a failure; on the third, it was irrelevant to success.

Some of these people are willing to give their lives for Allah but my money's on most of them wanting to continue existing.

Maybe you would behave like that; the vast majority of people around the world wouldn't.

"Americans have also only begun to understand that if radical Islam is one face of our enemy, the other is the radical left. For two hundred years the radical left has believed in a religion promising a heaven on earth whose end justifies any means."

"Liberals" and "Liberalism" are the enabler of America's enemies, of radical Islam, and of the Sept. 11 terrorists.

If it were not for "Liberals" and "Liberalism", America's enemies would pose no threat.

The only real threat to the U.S. comes from within--decadence, in the form of "Liberalism". (This, of course, has nothing to do with the word "liberal", meaning free, freedom-loving, or free-thinking.)

The Left--"Liberalism"--is the real threat to the U.S. The other enemies are opportunists.

Unless "Liberalism" is defeated in the Western Democracies, they will fall.

If "Liberalism" is defeated, America's other enemies will pose no serious threat.

Oh poo-poo, Pooh! Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War II, and the overwhelming defeat of the Nazis and the Japanese Imperialists made possible the prosperous, democratic, constitutional miracles that are contemporary Japan and Germany. Nobody wants this, but it may take the overwhelming defeat of Islam and the reeducation of Islamic populations to assure peace and liberty in the world and the survival of the Western Democracies. The best thing that could happen to Muslims would be conversion to Christianity and establishment of Western Civilization world-wide--especially in the Islamic theocracies.

And we are – or should be – at war with their allies, the international radical left.

Which, of course, will NEVER happen unless and until we can purge our own government of radical leftists. Does anyone think Tom Daschle would stand by while Dubya expanded the war to include military operations against the international radical left? He would not. He and Hillary and Teddy and every traitor in Congress would stand up and block any such effort. You can be certain of that.

So before we can hope to successfully wage war on Islam's great ally, international communism -- much less defeat Islam itself -- we must get rid of the traitors in our midst. The President, and only the President, is vested with the authority to accomplish this task by calling up the militia and appointing its officers, to do what must be done; namely, secure the homeland from the threat within. It's not such a radical or subversive idea; it's been done in the past . . . Round up your enemies, imprison and/or hang their leaders. After the war, the militia could be disbanded until needed again, perhaps in another two or three hundred years. We have not yet begun to take advantage of the tools the Framers themselves gave us to defend our great country.

Neither ordinary law enforcement, nor the regular military is suited for this job, constrained as they are by Congress, and by law. But the militia is bound by few such constraints.

I do wish our CIC would do this thing, and have called upon him in the past to at least consider it. But it's his call. One hundred percent his call. Until then no one in his right mind, no rogue general, no fiery Senator, no Franklin, no Jefferson, no Hamilton, would dare undertake it without his imprimatur.

The noose is tightening. We are beseiged on all sides and IMO, if the CIC does not make this call, then ultimately, we will most certainly lose. Daschle and his buddies will see to that.

Make the call, Mr. President.

You're sweeping it with a rather broud brush. The article is addressed to "radical Islam". You extended your stated fears by implication to all Muslims.

Actually, it is only we in the West who seem to make the distinction. Among Arabs, those we consider to be "radical Islam" are actually honored as "TRUE MUSLIMS." They are viewed as the vanguard of the faith, and are admired as the only ones with the courage to do the dirty work.

Why do you think the Palestinians were dancing in the streets on 9-11? Why are the citizens of the two most indebted nations to America, the Kuwaitis and Saudis, among the most vocal critics of the United States and most vocal defenders of those who seek your obliteration?

Because they know there's no difference between "radical Islam" and "moderate Islam" - it's merely a Western distinction. After all, who are we to tell them what true Islam is supposed to be? It's bad enough we're just like the Israeli Jews who don't pay attention to Muslims when they repeatedly say their goal is world domination and destruction of Judaism, Christianity and any group that stands in their way. Our weltanshauung of liberal democracy and freedom of expression blinds us to the notion they actually mean what they say and aren't merely grandstanding.

Don't you think Muslims the world over were laughing when non-Muslims such as President Bush tried to tell the world Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion?

Jonah Goldberg had a recent piece about the parallels between the Nazis and the militant Islamics.

One thing in particular that he pointed out was just how the Nazis laid out exactly what their goals were (such as in Mein Kampf) but in the rush to appease, no one took it at face value. (Interesting to see Buchanan morph into Neville Chamberlain in this respect).

He also pointed out that the whole concept of "Kampf" is similar to "Jihad".

Thanks for the bump.

I'm not contesting those points. But indiscriminate urban bombardment didn't help us accomplish those goals, and actually hindered said accomplishment in the European Theater.

Nobody wants this, but it may take the overwhelming defeat of Islam and the reeducation of Islamic populations to assure peace and liberty in the world and the survival of the Western Democracies.

OK, now you're proposing invading, occupying, and somehow controlling about 1/4th of the Earth's surface, containing 1/5th of the world's population, for their own good.

The best thing that could happen to Muslims would be conversion to Christianity and establishment of Western Civilization world-wide--especially in the Islamic theocracies.

You must be beyond draft age.

My greatest fear on Sept. 11 was that China was behind it--not because of a fear of the Chinese per se, but because it would be an indication that China's appraisal of the U.S. as hopelessly decadent was sufficiently convincing to the Chinese leaders to cause them to embark on an attack on the U.S.

(If anyone knows the signs of decadence through bitter experience, it's the Chinese.)

And after the Clinton Administration, the decadence of America's "Liberal" leaders, the decadence of the "Liberal" journalists and their propaganda in the newsmedia, and the closeness of the presidential election--even the American people did not know whether the U.S. was hopelessly decadent and sliding toward destruction or not.

I still think the Chinese leaders were watching to see what the U.S. reaction would be.

The response of the American people and of President George W. Bush was overwhelming.

It overwhelmed the Chinese. They will not consider any adventure against the U.S.

The alliance of Russia and the U.S. further frustrates any ambitions the Chinese may have for world domination and the destruction of the West. China will be forced to cooperate.

Islam will either cooperate and accomodate to the West or will be destroyed.

As for China and the Muslims--Islam is as odious to the Chinese as it is to anyone else.

America will prevail. There are two reasons: (1)The people of the American Heartland, where strength, energy, and the American genius flourish, and (2) President George W. Bush, who is the quintessence of the American Heartland and the embodiment of the American spirit.

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