Fitzgerald: Smooth Karzai's Sharia state and ignorance of Islam

The "war on terror" is nonsense that comes not from Muslims, but from Infidels. Ask yourself if, had you been alive in World War II, you would have been satisfied to hear a Fireside Chat in which FDR said "our war against the blitzkrieg" proceeds in France and Italy. No, you wouldn't. And you would know why.

Lack of knowledge may possibly be excused up to 9/11, but is not excusable now in any government officials. Their first duty after 9/11 was to remedy their own considerable ignorance, and in this they failed spectacularly. Because the Administration initially failed to learn enough about Islam, it never understood that the only argument that made sense in invading Iraq was not that there was a necessary connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Al Qaeda was and is merely one among many similar groups, and not even now the most important or necessarily the most dangerous. Saddam Hussein was most interested in Saddam Hussein. He was interested in his friends and relatives from Tikrit. Then in the Sunnis of Iraq. Then in being King of the Sunni Arabs. The idea of Islam conducting a worldwide Jihad was simply beyond his ken, not that he wouldn't have minded it, just so long as he could be King of the Caliph's Castle -- in order words, Mr. Big.

The failure to understand Islam meant that all sorts of goofy or messianic ideas were proposed and, in being proposed, believed. One is the belief that "democracy" is a plant easy to transplant to stony soil. This was and is believed although there was never any thorough investigation of why Islam appears to favor despotism, or of why only Lebanon (with a large and powerful Christian presence) and Turkey (with 80 years of Kemalism, i.e. systematic constraints put on the political power and influence of Islam) have shown signs of tolerating, to some degree, a version of democracy. And even that is not the full-fledged Western version, but at least the head-counting and to some degree, some legal protections against the force of Islam and the Sharia.

The failure to understand Islam meant that we would try to help Iraq, rather than to simply remove the dictator, and leave Iraq to do what it inevitably was going to do no matter what the Americans did. This was perfectly foreseeable in 2004. It had nothing to do with what American policy was, or how long its presence lasted. Civil war became inevitable when the Sunni despotism was removed over the 60-65% of the population that is Shi'a and deeply resentful, justifiably, with its previous treatment, and by the 20% of the population that is Kurd, not ethnic Arab, and which is also deeply resentful, justifiably, with ditto.

And the failure to understand Islam was accompanied by a failure to recognize, fully, the depth of that Shi'a resentment, and the depth of the Sunni rage at the perceived loss of power, and the depth of Kurdish desire to move from local autonomy to independence.

Very few intelligent people are employing their intelligence in Washington. The Administration was wrong, and so -- horribly -- have been almost all of its critics.

Except here at Jihad Watch. Here we have offered the most consistent and unrebuttable criticisms. They are based not on a desire to appease or ignore the menace of Islam, but to take it, and the instruments of Jihad, all into account -- and to figure out the thousand ways, little and big, to resist that Jihad. These may range from threatening Iran not only with destruction of its nuclear facilities but, as a delayed result, with national dissolution. The Azeris, the Baluchis, the Kurds, the Arabs could all rise up, possibly inspired both by a free Kurdistan, and by an obvious humiliation inflicted by the Americans on the regime should its weapons project be destroyed or heavily damaged.

Another path of resistance would be to support those European leaders who are both respectable (no Le Pens or Griffins need apply) and well-informed about the nature of Islam, and who have finally comprehended the scope and permanence of the menace that the large-scale presence of Muslims poses to all European Infidels. That presence has already created in each Infidel country a situation that is far more unpleasant, unstable, expensive, and physically dangerous for the Infidels than it would have been without that large-scale Muslim presence. And these leaders or potential leaders are only now beginning to understand the kind of things that will need to be done in order to halt the growth in that Muslim presence, and even reverse it. But they need help; they need signs of shared comprehension and alarm, that such phrases as the "war on terror" are hollow. There needs to be an end to the messianic belief that what is wrong with the Muslim world is poverty, or lords of misrule, or absence of democracy, or all kinds of things -- but never, ever, Islam itself. But it is Islam itself that explains the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of Muslim societies, and it is Islam itself that explaiins the behavior and attitudes of Muslims that threaten all Infidels, whether those Muslims live in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or in London or Madrid or Amsterdam or Falls Church, Virginia.

Those leaders need an American government that understands the threat and has figured out clever ways to instruct the public, even if it still feels the need to avoid using the word "Islam" straight up, but needs to dilute or modify that word somehow.

Above all, American or other Infidel support for Sharia-Lite regimes such as that of Karzai, which may require ignoring the persecution of non-Muslims and women in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, should be seen for the hollow, internally contradictory policy it is. It is one more example of stumbling all over, in a state of permanent confusion, as one must as long as one views Islam itself as a plausible and even indispensable part of some "solution" to a problem -- that problem being the threat of Islam itself.