Steyn: We Do Need To Win Iraq

[Annie]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn02.html

Don't deny that some Muslims are hot for jihad

April 2, 2006

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

If I were an anti-war leftie, I'd be very depressed by the Iraq anniversary protests. A few hundred people show up hither and yon to see Cindy Sheehan get arrested for the 15th time that week, or Charlie Sheen unveil his critically acclaimed the-World-Trade-Center-was-a-controlled-explosion conspiracy theory. The "Hot Shots! Part Deux" star is apparently an expert in that field, and he'd never seen commercial property break up that quickly since Heidi Fleiss' hooker ring. Anyway, Susan Sarandon's going to play Cindy in the movie, or maybe she's playing Charlie, or both -- either way, they might as well give her the Oscar during the opening titles.

But, while Charlie Sheen is undoubtedly a valiant leader, you couldn't help noticing it was followers the anti-war crowd seemed to be short of on the third anniversary. The next weekend half a million illegal immigrants -- whoops, sorry, half a million fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community-- took to the streets, and you suddenly realized what a big-time demonstration is supposed to look like. These guys aren't even meant to be in the country and they can organize a better public protest movement than an anti-war crowd that's promoted 24/7 by the media and Hollywood.

Well, OK, half the anti-war crowd aren't meant to be in the country either, if they'd kept their promise to move to Canada after the last election. But my point is there's no mass anti-war movement. Some commentators claimed to be puzzled by the low turnout at a time when the polls show Iraq increasingly unpopular. But there are two kinds of persons objecting to the war: There's a shriveled Sheehan-Sheen left that's in effect urging on American failure in Iraq, and there's a potentially far larger group to their right that's increasingly wary of the official conception of the war. The latter don't want America to lose, they want to win -- decisively. And on the day's headlines -- on everything from the Danish cartoon jihad to the Afghan facing death for apostasy -- the fainthearted response of "public diplomacy" is in danger of sounding only marginally less nutty than Charlie Sheen.

The line here is "respect." Everybody's busy professing their "respect": We all "respect" Islam; presidents and prime ministers and foreign ministers, lapsing so routinely into the deep-respect-for-the-religion-of-peace routine they forget that cumulatively it begins to sound less like "Let's roll!" and too often like "Let's roll over!"

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, gave a typical Western government official's speech the other day explaining that "a large number of Muslims in this country were -- understandably -- upset by those cartoons being reprinted across Europe and at their deeply held beliefs being insulted. They expressed their hurt and outrage but did so in a way which epitomized the learned, peaceful religion of Islam."

"The learned, peaceful religion of Islam"? And that would be the guys marching through London with placards reading "BEHEAD THE ENEMIES OF ISLAM" and "FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS WESTERN TERRORISM" and promising to rain down a new Holocaust on Europe? This is geopolitics as the Aretha Franklin Doctrine: The more the world professes its R-E-S-P-E-C-T, the more the Islamists sock it to us.

At a basic level the foreign secretary's rhetoric does not match reality. Government leaders are essentially telling their citizens: Who ya gonna believe -- my platitudinous speechwriters or your lyin' eyes?

To win a war, you don't spin a war. Millions of ordinary citizens are not going to stick with a "long war" (as the administration now calls it) if they feel they're being dissembled to about its nature. One reason we regard Churchill as a great man is that his speeches about the nature of the enemy don't require unspinning or detriangulating.

If I had to propose a model for Western rhetoric, it would be the Australians. In the days after Sept. 11, the French got all the attention for that Le Monde headline -- "Nous sommes tous Americains" -- "We are all Americans," though they didn't mean it, even then. But John Howard, the Aussie prime minister, put it better and kept his word: "This is no time to be an 80 percent ally."

Marvelous. More recently, the prime minister offered some thoughts on the difference between Muslims and other immigrant groups. "You can't find any equivalent in Italian or Greek or Lebanese or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad," he said, stating the obvious in a way most political leaders can't quite bring themselves to do. "There is really not much point in pretending it doesn't exist."

Unfortunately, too many of his counterparts insist on pretending (at least to their citizenry) that it doesn't exist. What proportion of Western Muslims is hot for jihad? Five percent? Ten, 12 percent? Given that understanding this Pan-Islamist identity is critical to defeating it, why can't we acknowledge it honestly? "Raving on about jihad" is a line that meets what the law used to regard as the reasonable-man test: If you're watching news footage of a Muslim march promising to bring on the new Holocaust, John Howard's line fits.

Is it something in the water down there? Listen to Howard's Cabinet colleagues. Here's the Australian treasurer, Peter Costello, with advice for Western Muslims who want to live under Islamic law: "There are countries that apply religious or sharia law -- Saudi Arabia and Iran come to mind. If a person wants to live under sharia law these are countries where they might feel at ease. But not Australia."

You don't say. Which is the point: Most Western government leaders don't say, and their silence is correctly read by a resurgent Islam as timidity. I also appreciated this pithy summation by my favorite foreigner minister, Alexander Downer: "Multilateralism is a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving internationalism of the lowest common denominator." See Sudanese slaughter, Iranian nukes, the U.N.'s flop response to the tsunami, etc. It's a good thing being an Aussie Cabinet minister doesn't require confirmation by John Kerry and Joe Biden.

My worry is that the official platitudes in this new war are the equivalent of the Cold War chit-chat in its 1970s detente phase --when Willy Brandt and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter pretended the enemy was not what it was. Then came Ronald Reagan: It wasn't just the evil-empire stuff, his jokes were on the money, too. In their own depraved way, the Islamists are a lot goofier than the commies and a few gags wouldn't come amiss. If this is a "long war," it needs a rhetoric that can go the distance. And the present line fails that test.

 

[Annie]

There's been a lot written on the Steyn article in the past two days, this one strikes me as best. There are a lot of links at site, expanding on the theme:

http://vodkapundit.com/archives/008736.php

Stay Focused
Posted by Stephen Green · 3 April 2006 · Permalink

In a column yesterday, Mark Steyn worried, “If this is a ‘long war,’ it needs a rhetoric that can go the distance.” He’s right, of course, and Steyn is also correct when he says our current political rhetoric isn’t good enough. Steyn is more right than he might know, if it’s true that the media is the “arm of decision” in this Long War. Putting those two things together with many other things I’ve gleaned over two decades of reading Austin Bay and Jim Dunnigan, I realized something:

Compared to the Current Mess, winning the Cold War was a walk in the park with Giselle Bundchen in a thin white summer dress, and all the lawn sprinklers running cold.*

Now, that’s true only to the point that you and Giselle might get in an argument so heated that you both pull out knives and stab each other to death over the course of an hour and a half.** And sometimes your young cousins would bomb each other to death. But the point remains: We’re in tough times.

(The next two paragraphs might not contain analysis you haven’t seen elsewhere, but they do provide valuable context for this essay. Please take the extra 15 second to read them.)

In the Cold War, the threat of losing an American city or three was quite small. On the other hand, the “small” wars we had to fight cost us nearly 100,000 soldiers. The Soviets knew that to strike even one American city meant total nuclear annihilation for the USS of R. But the Soviets could push us is places like Korea and Vietnam, and force us to commit hundreds of thousands of troops – tens of thousands of whom would die.

In the Long War, things are quite the other way around. We get to choose where to push – and the Bad Guys, despite what you see on the news, aren’t very good at fighting back. If the Long War lasts as long as the Cold War, and we were to keep losing soldiers at the present rate… then we’d lose 75% fewer soldiers than we lost in Korea and Vietnam combined. But you can be goddamn sure that given the chance, our Islamist foes would cut the heart out of New York. They damn near did it once, using little more than boxcutters. Imagine what they would do with badder weapons.

The Cold War was easier in another respect: there’s really nothing like the ever-present threat of total annihilation to focus the mind. Today’s threat is more abstract, and that makes it easier for most normal people to keep their heads in the sand.

If we’re going to win a long, ideological war, we need our primary schools to our children what patriotism is - and for the most part, they don’t. We need our college professors to give our best and brightest the intellectual ammunition to confront our destroyers – and for the most part, they don’t. We need our public thinkers to defend our laws and our way of life against foreign aggression – and for the most part, they don’t. We need our entertainers to choose the home team – and for the most part, they don’t. We need our politicians to show the backbone of Churchill, but for the most part, they don’t. And we need our military to understand, embrace, and put everything on the line for their country.

One out of six? That’s pretty bad. Is it enough? Probably not.

I said before it took the constant threat of a nuclear launch for us to keep our focus during the Cold War – end even then it was a hit or miss affair. It’s pretty obvious right now that we lack the tools to keep our focus during the Long War. I know exactly what it would take to get our focus – but it’s so terrible, it’s almost worse than losing***.

Better then if we had more allies at home. But we do not and probably will not. And that means we risk losing more Americans – soldiers abroad and perhaps countless thousands of civilians right here at home.

So get on board, people – it’s not too late.


UPDATE: You wouldn't think that Jill Carroll's story is related to this, but it is:

Jill Carroll will not be the last Westerner to be kidnapped in Iraq, but she may be the last one released. Kidnapping is the only real way the insurgents can get airtime these days, which is why Jihadi propaganda comes with kneeling captives at their feet. Releasing Carroll was an experiment, one that failed from the insurgency's point of view. Carroll was released and immediately disavowed statements she made in captivity. The insurgents were exposed as a cheap propagandists, and their message was blurred in the celebration surrounding Carroll's return home. Killing a hostage makes a far more drastic statement than releasing one does, which is precisely why we're unlikely to see any more hostages released.

Well. We know what our enemies are willing to do to stir emotions. What I'm trying to propose here is something well short of that.

Read More »





*This (the notion, not Giselle) is a small part of something I’ve been playing with off and on for a couple months. For lack of anything better, the working title is “The Great Big Blob of Essay.” What’s it about? Dunno – it’s still just a great big blob.

**Where’s she hiding a knife in that wet dress? Don’t ask.

***I imagine this essay will be the umpteenth where my critics will see what I’ve written through the narrow lens of the Iraq Campaign. I’m speaking broadly here, and it takes a special kind of spite not to see that.

 

[Bonnie]

Great article...

Vodkapundit.com? J/K

 

[Annie]

Great article...

Vodkapundit.com? J/K

Yup! That and littlegreenfootballs are my favorite names! Hogonice is pretty good too, but not political...

 

[Bonnie]

Yup! That and littlegreenfootballs are my favorite names! Hogonice is pretty good too, but not political...

I suppose that vodka has a way of inciting a tell it like it is mindset. Which is never a bad thing.

This post reminded me of the book Im currently reading by Michael Smerkonish entitled "Muzzled"

 

[Annie]

I suppose that vodka has a way of inciting a tell it like it is mindset. Which is never a bad thing.

Kinda goes with that old saying 'democracy whiskey sexy!'

 

[Bonnie]

Kinda goes with that old saying 'democracy whiskey sexy!'

OKAY!!!!! :tng: