From Walter Russell Mead:
…The greatest victory we have won in this war came on one of its most questionable battlefields: in Iraq. It was not a military victory, though it opened the door to military progress. It was a moral victory. And it was not something that Americans imposed on Muslims; it was a choice that Muslims made…
…They decided that the future of their families, their children and their values was better served by aligning with the United States against the terrorists and against the fanatics.
What those Sunni Arabs in Iraq came to understand is the basic truth of this conflict. The war unleashed nine years ago is not a clash of civilizations between Islam and the west. It is a clash between civilization and barbarism, and in that clash the Americans and true Muslims are on the same side…
I put a bit of a different spin on it – they didn’t so much decide to fight alongside us as recognize that they finally had a chance to settle accounts with those who had alternately bamboozled and brutalized them for the benefit of a tiny minority. Once in Iraq it has been Saddam and his henchmen, after Saddam it was al-Qaeda and other such groups trying to take over. We offered them the chance for no one to take over -for them to be able to live their lives as they see fit.
They took the chance and, so far, its working out.
Mead goes on to note that in the Moslem world, there is a lot of anger over this, that or the other American policy. I can imagine that most Moslems are horrified at some of the gross immorality on display in the West. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that when they think of “democracy” they don’t mean “hey, lets build a combination San Francisco/Las Vegas here in the Middle East”. Furthermore, I’m sure they’ve still got a bit of a learning curve on what real religious toleration is all about – the Christian minorities in the Moslem world have it very rough, even under the best of circumstances. But, and this is crucial, they are people who want to live their lives without let or hindrance from others – and in that, they are 100% like the rest of us, and thus our natural allies.
I talk about this theme from a different angle over at Noonan for Nevada – to nutshell it, we are faced not with a nation in arms against us; not with a war of Islam vs West. What we have are various, small minorities which wish to gain absolute power in order to advance whatever cause they think best regardless of what everyone else wants. My personal view is that the goal of 90% of the enemy is personal wealth and power – but even if I’m wrong on that, I’m right in my contention that decapitating the tiny minority is the key to victory.
How we go about finally getting rid of all the leadership of the enemy is an empirical question – you take a look at the particular circumstances for the leaderships of the nations and groups which battle us, and work out the best means of taking or killing them. But getting them out of they way is the only path to victory – because it is the only means of having the broad masses of the Moslem world able to take charge of their own lives…and once they do so, I’m certain they won’t be terribly interested in having their sons blow themselves to bits just on the off chance they might kill a few Israelis or Americans.
Victory, peace and freedom beckon us – if we’ll just understand what we’re faced with, and steel ourselves to the necessary actions.
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