Ideological War on Terror Needed
23rd November 2012
The U.S. military made impressive gains on the battlefield and covertly in countering Islamist terrorists since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the military and government at large so far have failed to strike the religiously motivated ideology behind al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists.
That’s the conclusion of a new book, “Fighting the Ideological War: Winning Strategies From Communism to Islamism, by a group of specialists urging the U.S. government to apply the lessons of the Cold War defeat of the Soviet Union to Islamist terrorism.
The problem for the U.S. government is “political correctness” toward Islam that has the prevented accurate identification of the enemy’s threat doctrine. For example, the Obama administration’s insistence on calling the Fort Hood, Texas, terrorist attack by Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan “workplace violence” is crippling efforts to strike at the ideology Mr. Gorka calls “global jihadism” – defined as both the violent and nonviolent theory and practice of imposing Islamic supremacy globally.
“Although we have proven our capacity in the last 10 years kinetically to engage our enemy at the operational and tactical level with unsurpassed effectiveness, we have not even begun to take the war to al Qaeda at the strategic level of counter-ideology, to attack it at its heart – the ideology of global jihad,” he states.
The West won the Cold War by realizing that the enemy wasn’t just Communists but Communism as an ideology. Anti-Communist strategy involved not only countering the aggressive activities of Communists but also by countering the ideology of Communism by education and persuasion. (Even then, the victory was only partial: Communist proclivities in our political, communications, and educational establishments are stronger now than when the Iron Curtain fell.)
The problem nowadays is that people aren’t yet willing to admit that the problem isn’t just Islamists but Islam itself, a totalitarian ideology that is just as hostile to our civilization and way of life as Communism ever was. The fact that Islam masquerades as a religion has gotten it a pass from our multi-culti Kumbaya-singing every-way-is-as-good-as-every-other-way ruling class, but eventually they’re going to wake up to the fact that just because an ideology looks like a religion doesn’t mean that it isn’t our mortal enemy. Westerners realized it in times past when the Turks were on their way to Vienna, and they will eventually come to realize it again; it’s just a matter of time, as things get worse and worse and worse while Muslims rub their noses into the dirt year after year after year.
Eventually enough of their sons will get beheaded, enough of their daughters will get gang-raped, and enough of their children will get blown up; they will have to face the fact that, hey, we live in the Dar al-Harb, and if we don’t want to wind up dhimmi-slaves in the Dar al-Islam, we’re going to have to do a little work.
When there are two incompatible sides to an issue, if one side wants a war, a war there will be; and if only one side is fighting that war, then that side will win.
Wakey-wakey!