Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald begins a series of reflections on what to do in Iraq now. There will be some unavoidable overlap in the material in each section, as each will provide a look at the problem from different but interlocking perspectives. Here is part 1:
It has apparently become Holy Writ that the well-being of Iraq (defined by whom?), or the well-being of “Iraqis” (defined as whom?), or the well-being of Muslims everywhere who must be saved from the consequences of their own Lords of Misrule, their own inshallah-fatalism and love of luxury and idleness that explains their economic disarray (so much more fun to pass the time sitting with hubble-bubble pipes, watching Al-Jazeera, and becoming indignant at those terrible Infidels with their billions in foreign aid that is obviously part of their diabolical colonialism or neo-colonialism or post-colonial colonialism (choose 1) — it has apparently become universally accepted dogma that all this is in the interest of Infidels.
This is one of those unexamined propositions that does not stand up.
The best way to deal with the world of Islam, the Muslims who are in dar al-Islam and those who have managed to settle in the Lands of the Infidels, is not to make them comfortable, not to transfer even further wealth — beyond the hundreds of billions transferred every year because of a grim accident of geology, money which in turn is used to fund various instruments of the Jihad, including mosques, madrasas, propaganda of every kind, bribes and the allure of business contracts, and so on.If one believes that Islam represents a permanent menace to the wellbeing of Infidels and to their civilizations, such as they are, with all their faults and stupidities big and little, then one must not be fooled into thinking that either “poverty” (what nonsense: the most sinister and threatening Muslim countries are those like Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. and Iran; the least threatening, the impoverished Mali and Mauritania) or “absence of democracy” is what will do the trick. Many of those so-called “reformers,” just like the North African lady who recently published a “daring” account of a muslima’s sexual life (i.e., more or less an autobiography), may recognize that their own ruling classes are corrupt and depraved. But then on quite a few matters they immediately demonstrate that defensiveness about Islam that is such a feature of even the most “moderate” and seemingly “reasonable” of Muslims, whose mask comes off the minute Islam is seen to be criticized by Infidels in the mildest of ways. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, for example, in undermining the regime of Mubarak and Son, no longer collaborates with the American Copts — no, he appears to be collaborating more with the Muslim Brotherhood. And of course Ibrahim’s views on Israel, his complete inability to see the claim of Jews to their own homeland, with defensible borders, and their legal, historic, and moral claim to all of the West Bank and to Gaza, is something beyond his capacity. He simply cannot get his mind around it– that is, he remains, for all of his “reform,” neither a vocal supporter of complete equality for the Copts (and perhaps a little apology for their treatment, in their own land, by Arabs who conquered, and subjugated them — no, that is simply an impossibility in Muslim terms), nor someone who is prepared to end the relentless Arab Jihad against the Infidel sovereign state of Israel.
Islam is the problem. The Administration prates about “democracy being on the march in the Middle East” (it isn’t) and then tells us, and asks us to take it on faith that somehow, in some way, “democracy in Iraq” (which would mean an end to Kurdish aspirations for independence, which should in fact be supported, and if carried out, would inevitably lead to Shi’a rule over Sunnis) will lead to a new country, a New Iraq where people think of themselves, magically, as Iraqis (oh, some do – perhaps as many as 5% on a good day) rather than as Kurds or Arabs, and among the Arabs, as Sunni Arabs or Shi’a Arabs. And that New Iraq, in turn, in defiance of Iraq’s entire modern history, will become a “Light Unto the Muslim Nations.” Nonsense on stilts.
But there are others, outside the Administration, who do not buy this. And what do they say? Some recognize that there is a problem with Islam, but they still insist on a modifying adjective: not Islam, but “Wahhabi” Islam, or “Salafist” Islam or “extremist” Islam. Again, nonsense on stilts.
And they tell us that because there is this “good Islam” and these “good Muslims” whom we must under no circumstances alienate, it is important not to seem to be troubled by Islam itself, to try to weaken Islam itself or at least the hold it possesses over so many of its adherents, for otherwise there is “no hope.” But “no hope” of what? Infidels cannot possibly continue to be confused by the idea that “moderate” Muslims (never adequately defined, or rather, when they are properly defined in a way that causes them to be no threat to Infidels, they simply disappear, do not exist except in infinitesimal numbers). It is important for Infidels to get things straight about Islam. The promotion of the idea that “moderate Muslims are the solution” muddies the waters, obscures what should be clear, and holds out a forlorn hope which can be an excuse for further inaction. This is true especially in Europe, where the indigenous Infidels need to be much more informed, and thus much more alarmed, than they are, with their dreams of “integration” of Muslims, and their dreamy belief in those same “moderates” that hardly exist, or if they exist nonetheless mislead about the nature of Islam and the prospects for change, or if they do not mislead, can at any time metamorphose into “immoderate” Muslims — prompted perhaps by personal difficulties that no Infidel is likely to discern or be able to prevent.
It is only once Islam as an ideology is understood, when its tenets are understood, when the example of Muhammad (and the life of Muhammad, in every detail) is understood, when the history of Muslim conquest and subjugation of Infidels is understood (without the myth of Andalusia, without the exaggerations about the “great achievements” of Islamic culture that, looked at closely, become those mainly of transmission, of borrowing, and of relying on the fructifying presence of considerable numbers of Jews and Christians during the first few centuries after the initial Muslim conquest.
Then we will get somewhere, and the nonsense now coming out of those in the Administration who wish to continue the folly in Iraq, when Iraq presents the perfect place to exploit the two natural fissures within Islam: the ethnic (the resentment of non-Arab Muslim for the supremacist Arab Muslims, which in Iraq has been expressed in the mass murder of Kurds by Arabs, and the overwhelming desire of Kurds for an independent state, which they deserve, and which would serve Infidel interests) and the sectarian (the growing resentment that Shi’a feel for Sunnis, not only in Iraq, but in Pakistan, in the eastern oil-bearing province of Al-Hasa in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait and in Bahrain, and of course in Iran itself, a Shi’a state that can be expected to aid fellow Shi’a while Sunnis, in turn, can be expected to aid fellow Sunnis).
Iraq presents a splendid opportunity. Let us not mess it up by continuing to remain there. Every single division within Islam should be exploited, and can be by simply leaving the place and its largely unpleasant and irremediably hostile people (yes, I know about the very nice pro-American bloggers in Iraq, all five or six of them, out of 25 million people. They do not move me nearly as much as do the American soldiers whose lives have been disrupted, or changed utterly when they are wounded, or ended forever).
We want not to “stay the course” if the “course” itself is based on a faulty understanding of Islam. We want to “change course” if by so doing we can achieve our real aims — which are to contain Islam, to buy time in order to let other Infidels come to comprehend, despite the vast army of Arab hirelings and Muslim apologists (or rather, apologists for Islam, many of whom are non-Muslims) abroad in the lands of the Infidels, and to help create the conditions in which, I will repeat for the hundredth time, the political, economic, social, and intellectual failures of the Muslim lands and peoples, over a very wide area, and for a very long time, can be seen to be directly related to the tenets, to the attitudes, to the atmospherics of Islam itself, or that Islam naturally promotes.
Will no one in Congress stand up and relate the desire to end the misallocation of resources — of men, money, materiel, military morale, and attention — not to the goals of appeasers and pacifists, but to those who want us out precisely because the Jihad is a menace, and the menace is world-wide, and the menace will not be mitigated in the slightest by creating, over years and years, a preposterous Light Unto the Muslim Nations in the Land Between the Two Rivers?
Will no one in the military, or in the Pentagon spring for a ticket for J. B. Kelly, or Bat Ye’or, or both of them to come to the Pentagon and explain exactly why Bernard Lewis and his acolytes should not be taken as the last word on Grand Strategy in Iraq or, for that matter, anywhere else in the Muslim world, or in dealing with Muslims in Europe? Not enough money in the budget?
Here, we’ll take up a collection. Those of us — the growing numbers — who are appalled by the idiocy and the waste now on display in Iraq, and the failure to recognize the real opportunity for demoralizing, splitting, and containing Islam that Iraq presents, will turn our pockets inside out, if only such people can be given a hearing.