Those in the military who understand the problem of Islam, which is to say, for Infidels, the problem of Jihad, conducted by all means available, surely must also understand that the war of self-defense that needs to be fought is not merely, not even mainly, one to be conducted by military means. It is true that in the end, if efforts at interdiction fail — and they were hardly used in the case of Pakistan, and have come too late and were always too ineffectual in the case of Iran — then it is only by military means that a Muslim state can be prevented from acquiring weapons of mass destruction (Iran) or, if it has unconscionably been allowed to acquire them, to be prevented from acquiring the best means to deliver them, and otherwise threatened with terrible sanctions (Pakistan).
The first is to identify, and then to figure out how best to exploit — sometimes, as in Iraq, by withdrawing, by getting out of the way, by doing nothing to diminish — pre-existing fissures within that Camp of Islam. In Iraq two of the three main fissures — the sectarian (Sunni and Shi’a), and the ethnic (Arab and non-Arab Muslims) exist, and nothing need be done to encourage them. But at the very least, nothing need be done either to try to minimize them, or protect Muslims from other Muslims. The third fissure is not to be found within Iraq, but rather among Muslim nations — that of the oil-and-gas rich Muslims and the Muslims who do not partake of that manna from Allah which surely, so we should encourage, was meant by him to be shared by all the members of the Umma.
The second part of an intelligent strategy to contain the forces of Jihad would be to educate a sufficient number of Infidels, all over the Western world — in Western Europe, in Israel, in Australia, in Canada and North America — and indeed all over the Infidel world. This includes Japan and Korea and China, for example, and places where the problem is, because of experience with Islam, quickly grasped, as in India and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Infidels in all these places need to be educated as to not only what is in the texts of Islam, but how Muslims apply those texts, what they make of those texts, and how the entire structure of this Belief-System is reinforced in a hundred sundry ways in the minds of its Believers, and especially in the minds of the primitive masses. For these primitive masses, after all, constitute most Muslims, and with them we must reckon, not with the smooth spokesmen and apologists who can present a pleasing or even comforting facade.
When enough Infidels have studied enough to understand all the ways in which the failures, political, economic, social, intellectual and moral failures, of Islamic states and societies, and even in Muslim families in the West that remain suffused with Islam, are all explained by Islam itself, that will allow, or rather force, many in the Muslim lands to deal with that recognition. Many will secretly admit to the truth of what is said, which has to be endlessly repeated, relentlessly maintained, implacably offered up by Infidels. This must be done so that Muslims themselves will lose their wonted, and quite illegitimate, self-confidence, or arrogance, and a hundred or a thousand Ataturks are heard from, and the most intelligent Muslims finally follow the examples of Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Wafa Sultan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and become defectors from the Army of Islam. When the Muslim states, societies and individuals are constantly put in a position of attempting — quite unconvincingly — to disprove the proposition that the ills of Muslim states are indeed a result of Islam, then a condition for the containment of Islam will have been achieved.
This is not only the only way to proceed. It is the most rational and effective way. It is the way that, in a time of permanent scarcity, in the coming century of Sauve Qui Peut, that resources can be husbanded, and not — as they have been over the past few years of frenetic and ill-conceived activity that is the result of ignoring the nature of Islam, its meaning and its full menace — squandered.
Thrift, thrift, you Horatios at the Bridge.