There is a consensus that Islamic terrorism is now the greatest threat to America’s peace and stability. [Some few would demur; that it takes a close second place to current economic stagnation.]
Within that consensus, there are two distinct attitudes about what is the defense against this menace. One calls for a continuing, debilitating but long-term campaign to destroy the terrorists. The other calls for an all-out, immediate strategy to destroy the terrorists and their sanctuaries. These two approaches cross party lines, although Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton despite her inheritance of the Obama Administration and its avoidance of foreign commitments tends to fudge that approach. Donald Trump bombastically takes the later route although he has been less than specific just how he would succeed. And so in fact, the two approaches cross party lines and often other ideologies.
For many, too young to have been in on its origins, the successful but long war against Communism is only vaguely appreciated. Sven F. Kraemer has recently published what may not be an easily readable text but the best compendium of data on the long campaign to resist Soviet-led Communism’s attack on European and American societies. “Inside the Cold War from Marx to Reagan” is, indeed, a bible for those interested in learning how much the conflict entailed. And perhaps no one other than Kraemer is more qualified to compile it, the son of a famous anti-Communist strategist, and himself a veteran of many critical government posts from which the fight was observed and led.
Will the fight against Islamic terrorism be that kind of long and tortured conflict that ultimately destroyed Communism as Kraemer documents? Obviously, it is the answer to that question which dictates the current two approaches to the problem.
There is evidence in historical analogies that the current resistance to Islamic fanaticism current drive into Western societies is a repetition of earlier struggles. The totalitarian political concept of Islam [“surrender”, indeed as its Arabic word signifies] coupled with religious mythology and moral concepts borrowed from Jews and Christians, has been repelled by the West before. But earlier Islamic efforts to overwhelm the other cultures were led by armies. This time, there is the threat of a doubled-edge weapon: an ideological assault on a Christian world which has lost its faith in its institutions, and by a vast wave of Muslim migrants filling the empty spaces left by falling Western birthrates.
Furthermore, the West is disarmed by its attempt to give Islam irrational ideological tolerance in the open forums which are the essence of modern democratic societies. When in 2016 Pope Benedict XVI tried to reassert the valid arguments critical of the foundations of Islam, there was a torrent of negative controversy and even abuse from the elites. Benedict’s critics refused the basic argument that it matters whether God is essential;ogos (Divine Reason) or voluntas (Pure Will), which is from where Muslims approach their godhead. The first understanding facilitates civilization development, true freedom, and a complete understanding of reason. The second sows the seeds of decline, oppression, and unreason.
To sling the epithet of “Islamophobia” at those who argue for such fundamental differences between the Muslim culture and the West’s intellectual inheritance is to not only misunderstand the argument but to threaten the security of our world.
* This commentary has been posted on yeoldebrabb.com