How We Lose

29 October Washington Times commentary - How We Lose by Herbert London and Linden Blue.

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President Bush asserts forcefully that the United States will prevail in the war against radical Islamists. He may be right. We pray he is right. However, it is also important to understand the strength of the forces arrayed against us.

There are at least five reasons why we may lose the war against radical Islam -- which is in fact, a war for the Free World as we know it.

• First, the extraordinary advances in military technology we command are not necessarily advantages in an insurgency struggle...
  
• Second, the United States is far more vulnerable to asymmetric warfare than are our enemies. We have rich targets all over the world, while our foes are shadowy and without a national fingerprint...
  
• Third, the enemy has more discretionary funding than we do. With the price of oil somewhere between $60 to $75 a barrel, funds are readily available for propaganda and recruitment in madrassas and mosques around the world...
  
• Fourth, radical Islam has instilled fear in the West and among moderate Muslims, which is manifested in the effort at appeasement...
  
• Fifth, arguably the most significant point, is that Islamists are united, notwithstanding the well-publicized differences between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Islamists believe the West has been weakened by cultural degradation. They also believe their goal of caliphates from Madrid to Jakarta is an inevitability. By contrast, the United States itself and its allies are divided on strategy and on the marshaling of resources to fight the enemy...

For most Europeans and about half of Americans, there is denial that we are in anything like an existential conflict. In an existential conflict, losing can be very costly. Benjamin Franklin famously said the American Revolutionaries had to hang together lest they hang separately. Hanging was not an abstraction to Franklin. He, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington and many other patriots would, likely, have been hanged if the Revolution had not succeeded.

Hanging together should not be an abstraction to Americans today. The onslaught of media and political criticism of the Bush war effort makes it obvious to our adversaries that we are not hanging together. In this environment, they expect to defeat us eventually, just as we were defeated in suffered a loss in Vietnam. Only this time we have no safe haven for retreat.

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I am inclined to take seriously the article in the November/December 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs by Richard Haas entitled The New Middle East which describes the end of an era and the loss of American influence, the conditions and why they exist, and recommendations about how we can go about regaining some of our influence

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Fifth, arguably the most significant point, is that Islamists are united, notwithstanding the well-publicized differences between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Islamists believe the West has been weakened by cultural degradation. They also believe their goal of caliphates from Madrid to Jakarta is an inevitability. By contrast, the United States itself and its allies are divided on strategy and on the marshaling of resources to fight the enemy...

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No, they are not. Shi'ia radicals and sunni radicals would just as gladly fight each other as they would non-muslims. Iran almost went to war with Taliban Afghanistan in 1998. Iran cooperated with US during OEF. AQ in Iraq is targeting shi'ias. There is regular violence in Pakistan between sunnis and shi'ias. There is little love between Iran and AQ. etc

That's like saying Pope and Falwell are same thing as both are christians trying to evangilise. Yet one is catholic and other protestant and would likely call each other heretic and infidel if given the chance.

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Fifth, arguably the most significant point, is that Islamists are united, notwithstanding the well-publicized differences between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Islamists believe the West has been weakened by cultural degradation. They also believe their goal of caliphates from Madrid to Jakarta is an inevitability. By contrast, the United States itself and its allies are divided on strategy and on the marshaling of resources to fight the enemy...

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Right now they are united because they share a common disdain for the West. The question is how do we split them? Current controveries in Britain and France over headscarves is not helping Muslims to feel accepted in the west. To defeat these Islamists we must find a way to deny them the support of the majority of Muslims by delegitimizing their cause and/or increasing the acceptance of the western world. There is no easy or quick fixes for this and the west must do a better job of presenting itself while simultaneously discrediting these extremist ideas if we are ever going to be successful.

I tend to feel that some of these debates (headscarves, for example) become rather disingenuous when you get right down to it. Any time you move to a new culture, it is expected that you will adapt to their mainstream customs. Muslims want us to tolerate all of their customs, while you see little in the way of flexibility within theirs. Within the average Western culture, bandits, gangsters, and muggers conceal their faces. It has a very negative connotation to us. This is something of a hot button rant-type issue for me, since it seems that in these discussions we are always the ones who need to give up something, while they hide behind the bulwark of tradition and custom.

Ok...Monday morning rant is over with...:o

I'm a bit confused, Steve. Do you believe that Western nations should enforce a dress code upon Muslims as the French are now doing? Should we do the same for Hasidic Jews? I'm having trouble understanding how my rights are being violated because a Muslim can dress however they like. What have I surrendered, exactly?

Also I find the cited editorial extraordinarily hysterical and shot through with conflation of threats, exaggeration (to say the least), and a sort of defeatist pessimism about American culture that frankly rankles. It makes me wonder if the authors make frequent use of this product, perhaps whenever they chance upon any recent news item.

What I believe is that they can dress any way they choose, but for official photographs and such they should conform to the standards set for all individuals (like taking off facial coverings for drivers' license photographs). You would not be allowed to obscure your appearance in such circumstances.

I believe I read about one court case where this was an issue in Florida. I believe the judge ruled against the Muslim niqabi who argued she should be able to obtain a driver's license while wearing a face covering in the photo, arguing that 14 states do not use photographs for driver's licenses and that it was a violation of her religious freedom. A Muslim legal expert testified against her.