[lit-ideas] What should we call this war?
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:29:40 -0800
To a large extent the message train, "who do you support in this war?"
didn't result in a serious discussion. After 9/11 I discussed at
excruciatingly great length how we were at war with Islamists and not
terrorists. The old-timers are intimately familiar with that discussion and
are bent on jerking me around rather than respond seriously. If I get
side-tracked into saying again what I said back in 2002 then I won't keep
asking them who they are supporting in this war. The discussion has moved
away from my question into a quibble.
The quibble is interesting, but it deserves a different title; so I've given
it one.
The Bush administration probably didn't want to declare War against Militant
Islam, aka Islamism, aka Fundamentalist Islam because it would sound too
much like we were going to war against a religion. The Islamists could
declare, as have anyway, that we are taking up the Christian Crusade once
again.
The Islamist ideology is well known. I described it recently (once again)
and so won't do it in this note. The Shiite Islamists using Khomeini's
ideology want to export their "Revolution" until they achieve a Pan-Muslim
ummah; however the element not to be compromised (for Shiite Iran) is a
strong Iran. If Iran becomes strong enough then the Revolution can be
exported in accordance with Khomeini's original intent.
The Sunni Islamists are also taking what they can get in the Middle East but
their goal is the World and not just an Ummah in the Middle East; at least
that is the goal that Sayyid Qutb voiced.
My impression is that Iran while hoping to export their revolution, is
taking a stance like Stalinist Russia. They have a nation they feel they
can make strong. If they can get nuclear weapons then no one will have the
courage to thwart them; they can then concentrate more securely on exporting
their Revolution. They understand the lesson of Saddam quite well. He
made his move toward a Pan-Islamic State before he got his nuclear weapons
and the U.S. stopped him. Iran has been much more cautious.
The Sunni Islamists strike me as taking a Trotskyite approach. For them,
there is no one nation to be preserved, no mother Russia. For them there
are no national boundaries, only the ummah and they have the ability to
launch attacks from many parts of it.
The tactic the Islamists (both Shiite and Sunni) use is asymmetric warfare.
They use modern explosives and inexpensive true-believing transporters to
deliver their weapons. They cannot deliver serious attacks against military
installations, but they can terrorize civilians in virtually any nation.
And the civilians pay for the wars their militaries fight. The civilians
are far more timid than the military; which is something the Islamists have
long known. They will be the ones begging their politicians to put a stop
to the attacks; whatever it takes. We have seen the effects. For example,
a hard-line Spanish leader was removed from office because the Spanish
civilians wanted the Islamists to quit attacking them. The new Spanish
leader was much softer on Islamism.
Something like this went on during the Cold War. We said we were fighting
Communism. We were fighting the ideology that inspired the Communist
revolution in Russia, and we were fighting against a similar sort of tactic.
Communists would infiltrate a nation, contact the Wretched of the Earth, and
attempt to get them to overthrow their government. This sort of revolution,
an Islamist Revolution, was to be the first step in creating a unified
Ummah, but it only succeeded in one nation, Iran. The Islamists had high
hopes for other nations, but nothing else has succeeded. So the Islamist
Revolution has not gone as well as the Islamists of either hue had hoped.
But days are still young, and the confused decadent West may allow Iran to
get its nuclear weapons. Iran is prepared to show the world that they know
how to use them. I don't mean they will actually use them. They will use
them to force the West to leave them alone while they engage in some serious
Revolution exportation. They aren't hurrying to get their nukes with any
hope of matching the American arsenal. All they want is to follow the North
Korean plan. They feel nukes will make them invulnerable to American
interference. They are in a very different environment from North Korea,
however, which is an Asian pariah. Iran is not a pariah. It is in the
midst of significant sympathy - lots of Arab Islamists who share similar
views, and since Khomeini, Iran has been downplaying the difference between
Shiism and Sunnism. Iran has the means and experience to export their
Revolution big time if only they can keep the U.S. from invading them the
way they invaded Iraq. So this war is against Islamism in the same way the
Cold War was against Communism.
Another similarity with the Cold War is that our press has been preempted.
It has taken sides with the enemy, but with far less justification. In the
West there was a love affair with Marxism and the Soviet state that
epitomized the Marxist ideal. Many retained that love even when Stalin
destroyed it for most Western intellectuals. It was transformed into a more
acceptable form, that emotion, during the Vietnam War because there was no
need to demand a love for Communism, only a hate for the opposers of
Communism. That hate, perhaps was not based on anything capable of
analytical justification and so remained available. It could be reawakened
by this new opponent of the West, the Islamists.
The propagandists don't need a coherent argument that stands up to analysis.
They just need an event that puts the West in a bad light. They can then
promote the event as though it stands for the entire West, its attitudes,
its mores. We have seen the same approach being used for the Islamist
cause: the flushing down the toilet of a Koran, a few soldiers messing with
prisoners in Abu Ghraib, a few cartoons. It is enough . . . but is it? The
Abu Ghraib business was in keeping with the Communist cause celebre, but a
Koran going down a toilet in Guantanamo and some cartoons in Denmark? The
old Leftists can't really get their teeth into cartoons. The burning of
embassies over cartoons is too alien for even the most confirmed Leftist.
The Islamists may be hurting an important part of their base with such
tomfoolery. Unfortunately for the Islamists, they can't help it. They were
converted to Fundamentalist Islam and they are now True Believers. Such
matters as the cartoons may eventually cause the Leftists to give up on
them. We shall have to wait and see.
Like the writer of the "Gramscian Damage" article, I think the West will
eventually win, but it is much too soon to be sure of that. We have a bunch
of weapons we can't use, and the populace is verrrrrryyyy slow to recognize
that we are at war. And the War we are fighting isn't like the old wars so
they don't like it. And the Leftists among them never accepted the
anti-Communist view; so that parallel does more harm than good. This
populace is well-fed, spoiled, petulant and not at all cooperative. Who are
these Islamists? We don't see any stinking Islamists? We don't believe
there are any. It might take a long time to get past all of that. Thus,
the Islamists have a chance - not a very good one - but a chance.
So what should we call this war? We should call it the War against
Islamism. They have banged much more than a shoe against a table as they
promised to bury us.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Teemu Pyyluoma
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 1:17 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Who are you supporting in this war?
Let's start with some definitions, as the discussion
is too muddied.
War
a) War is a military action.
b) State of War means that the government has powers
not available to it in peace time. At a state war,
rights can be suspended, citizens may be enlisted to
fight the war, property like trucks and ships can be
placed under military command and so on.
Both are necessary but neither alone is a sufficient
condition for war.
Terror
a) Violent attacks, usually on civilians.
b) Designed to spread panic, terrorize, and thus
sometimes called an attack on the mind.
Once again both are necessary but neither alone is a
sufficient condition for terror.
So war on terror is a total war that will not be won
as long as terror exists, meaning that the war will
never end. Which means that exceptional government
powers will become the norm.
So the question that should be asked is whether
terrorism is the kind of threat that requires
permanently altering the society and removing safe
guards on government power?
People often evaluate threats based on either
intentions of would be attackers or the potential
impact of the threat. This is wrong in both counts,
wrong as in trying to fit a square peg in a round hole
and not as in cheating on your wife is wrong.
That there are people hell bent on destroying this or
that civilization is inevitable and irrelevant. The
question to ask is whether they are capable of doing
that. AQ may want to invade Andalusia, but can they
take on the Spanish army and the entire NATO in a war
of invasion?
Furthermore, it shows lack of imagination to fixate on
a single potentially devastating threat. Once we get
to very low probability scenarios (like a nuclear
attack on Manhattan), the scenarios multiply
correspondingly. Manhattan could also be destroyed
by an industrial accident, say a catastrophical
chemical leak on a ship in East River, ebola outbreak,
massive fire, earthquake, tsunami, meteor strike,
riots, etc. Safety regulations and authorities,
medical systems, fire department and fire safety
regulations, intelligence services and police, exist
to counter these threats and mitigate the damages, and
are (should be?) provided resources accordingly.
One ought to remember that as a cause of loss of human
life and other damages, terrorism probably ranks well
below lightning strikes. Thus a total response, a war
is not justified by it.
One more thing about preventive strikes. That
counter-attack is by far the most effective defense is
obvious and well understood. Should for example
President of USA discover that there is a terrorist
training camp in Algeria, there is no question that he
should order an attack on it, preferably in
co-ordination with the Algerian government. But the
problem with the doctrine of prevention is that it
takes for granted that there are targets, it is like
insisting that your opponent show up 9 AM on third
Monday of the month to a battlefield of your choice in
case they want to fight a war.
The strength of small scale, low budget terrorism is
that it is very difficult to detect the terrorists in
advance. A discussion on whether we have the will to
strike at them when found is completely beside the
point, which is can we find them?
Yours,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland
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