The War on Terror is Over? I Wonder Who Won?
Vol: 162 Issue: 21 Saturday, March 21, 2015
According to a senior State Department official writing in the National Journal, the war on terror is over and now it is safe for President Obama to embrace the Islamists that are about to take over the government in Egypt.
“Now that we have killed most of al Qaeda, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaeda see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”
This new outlook has, in the words of the National Journal, come from a belief among administration officials that “It is no longer the case, in other words, that every Islamist is seen as a potential accessory to terrorists.”
The National Journal’s Michael Hirsh explains:
The new approach is made possible by the double impact of the Arab Spring, which supplies a new means of empowerment to young Arabs other than violent jihad, and Obama’s savagely successful military drone campaign against the worst of the violent jihadists, al Qaeda.
For the president himself, this new thinking comes from a “realiz[ation that] he has no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and other relatively ‘moderate’ Islamist groups emerging as lead political players out of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.”
What, exactly, does “relatively moderate” mean, in the context of Islamists taking over one of the world’s leading Arab states? Relatively moderate? Compared to whom? Muhammed? Osama bin Laden? Louis Farrakkan?
Evidently, “relatively moderate” has become the new standard, which gives one pause to wonder: If moderate means non-violent Islam, and extreme Islamists are the ones that want to kill us, does “relatively moderate” mean they only want to wound us?
It is as absurd a notion as the notion that the war on terror is over. If the war on terror is over, then does that mean we can wear our shoes in airports? Does it mean that we can relax, breathe a sigh of relief and go back to our pre-9/11 existence?
If the war on terror is over, does that mean we can eliminate the Department of Homeland Security? What about the TSA? Or any of the rest of the alphabet soup of agencies that were created to fight the war on terror?
The Hirsh article quotes Reuel Marc Gerecht, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan institution focusing on national security and foreign policy, whom Hirsh calls “one of the smarter hardliners on the Right” — a claim demolished by Gerecht himself in Hirsch’s next line:
“Hirsh says Gerecht is among an emerging group of policymakers and analysts coming to realize that “the Arab world may find another route to democracy — through Islamism.”
Democracy through Islamism? Wouldn’t that be a little like achieving democracy via Soviet Communism?
Soviet Communism did not survive its very first democratic vote. Why? Because one system is the direct opposite of the other. If one exists, the other cannot. So it is with democracy and Islamism. In a democracy, the people rule.
In an Islamic republic, Sharia law rules. Sharia law is to democracy what Kryptonite is to Superman. And if you will allow me to answer my own question posed by today’s title. . .
If the war on terror is over, we lost.
Assessment:
To claim the war on terror is “over” while we have forces fighting terrorists all over the world is delusional, but not as delusional as accepting the claim at face value.
More than that, it displays both a fundamental ignorance of Islam that has plagued successive US administrations since Bill Clinton brought Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin together as part of the official extortion scheme called “Land for Peace.”
If the “land for peace” concept was applied somewhere in, say, New York City, it would begin something like this: “Hey! Nice place you got here. Be a real shame to see it get all busted up . . . “
“Land For Peace” is simply a revision of the Mob’s ‘protection’ rackets writ large across the world stage. Arafat demanded payment or he’d continue to ‘bust the place up’ until he got it. Rabin paid off Arafat, and then Arafat began demanding more and more, literally bleeding Rabin to death and then starting over.
Each demand for a payoff was backed by Washington, who convinced itself against all logic that eventually, Arafat’s side would be satisfied and would settle down to live in peace with Israel, despite the clear and repeated assurances from the Arab side that peaceful co-existence was impossible.
Islam cannot accept the existence of a Jewish state on territory once under Islamic rule. It is a basic article of faith that the worldwide Muslim umma (or community) is obligated first and foremost to the recovery of Jerusalem as an Islamic city.
Land for peace is just one example among many of how little the West understands about the enemy. To this day, it remains in denial, convinced that all that is necessary for there to be peace is to force Israel to give up just a little bit more. . .
The claim that the war on terror is over moves that state of denial to the next level. What it really means is that those making it have decided that we can live with Islamism in some form of modified dhimmitude.
The war on terror isn’t over until the terrorists stop making war. That hasn’t happened and it won’t happen until the flag of Islam flies over the cities of Jerusalem and Washington.
It is a grim assessment, but it is the only logical one. The only possible way for the West to win the war with Islam is for Islam to acknowledge that Allah has given up on trying to fulfill Islam’s most basic demand, which is that the whole world submit to Islam.
Alternatively, for the war terror to end, Israel would have to acknowledge that the Bible is wrong. For the war on terror to end, America would have to acknowledge that the Koran is right. And both would have to submit to Islam or accept the lot of a dhimmi living under Sharia Law.
While there are those within the government who actually think that the US would be better off under Sharia law, the vast majority are simply clueless about who the enemy is or what the enemy wants. Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas explains:
But the war is much broader than al Qaeda. Terrorism flows from a belief system and worldview that will not be crushed just because a few al Qaeda leaders are gone.
The secular Left refuses to understand this. Terrorism is not the only tool in the arsenal of radical Islamists. Infiltration, Islamic schools, the building of mosques in the midst of the “Great Satan,” the running of Muslim candidates for public office, the demands for more “rights” and civil liberties, while Islamists deny such things to the nations they dominate — all of this and more prove that the war, by whatever name one wishes to call it, is not over. In fact, it is just beginning.
Radical Islamists are attempting to unify the Muslim world under Shariah law and other dictates of the extremist wing of the religion. If they succeed, they will most assuredly redouble their efforts to eliminate Israel and come after America.
Thomas is one of the very few voices saying out loud what most of us instinctively know — but few of us dare say in public. There is no possible accommodation to be reached with the Islamist enemy. When death in combat is the only certain way to achieve salvation, what can we offer as an alternative?
What would a man take in exchange for his own soul? That is what is at stake here, as viewed from the side of radical Islam.
Giving up the fight is nothing less than the selling of one’s soul to Satan. And THAT is how the West defines an “Islamic moderate” — a Muslim who is willing to make that deal.
This isn’t really about the war on terror being over. What it is really about is whether or not the Obama administration can safely ’embrace’ Islamists.
It also provides another disturbing possible answer to the question, “Where is the United States in Bible Prophecy?”
Origianlly Published: April 26, 2012
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