Weekend Commentary ... Middle East headed towards a 'civil war' ?
(snip)"Iraq has inadvertently become the battleground of a long overdue reckoning, a bellwether of the future of the Middle East. If the constitutionalists win, then the jihadists will be in retreat and there will be at last a third way between radical Islam and dictatorship.
We must now step up our efforts. At home we should no more tolerate the expression of Islamic fascism on the shores of the West than Churchill would have allowed Hitler Youth to teach Aryan global racial superiority in London while it was under the Blitz.
When the extremists are repatriated to the Middle East, and understand they are never again welcome in Europe and America, millions of others will know the reason why — and decide by their own attitudes to the killers in their midst whether they themselves wish ever again to visit, work, or be educated in the West.
If the terrorists are not isolated and ostracized at home, then any Western government would have to be suicidal to admit any more young males from the Islamic Middle East. Indeed, if the Iranian public or the Saudis, or Egyptian citizenry do not begin creating a climate hostile to radical Islam, then they de facto can only become the enemies of the United States in a war that they can only lose.
To fathom our success abroad, read what the Islamic websites — or Mohammed Atta’s own father — now say about the evil Americans and George Bush, who, they lament, have set Muslim against Muslim in Lebanon, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine. The foreign contagion of democracy and reform, despite the best efforts of both the mullah and the strongman, now infects the Arab Street and it seems to be driving bin Laden and Bashar Assad alike crazy.
Iraqi guardsmen are fighting al Qaedists as Afghans die in firefights with Taliban remnants. Note well that at the loci of American democratizing presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are few local Iraqis and Afghans — as there are few Turkish or Indian Muslims — who are eager for global jihad against the West. The killers instead flock from elsewhere to those new nations to stop the experiment before it spreads. Give dictatorial Pakistan or Egypt billions, and we get ever more terrorists; give the Iraqis and Afghans their freedom and their citizens are unlikely to show up in London and Madrid blowing up civilians, but rather busy at home killing jihadists.
In this Mexican standoff, the Islamists, dictators, and democratic reformers are waging a struggle for the hearts and minds of the Middle East. We have had our own similar three-way shootout in the West between fascists, Communists, and liberal republics. Backing Communists to stop fascists or helping autocrats fight Communists were stop-gap, wartime exigencies — never solutions in themselves.
The Middle East does not need a reformation in Islam as much as a war to eradicate a minority of religious fanatics who are empowered through their blackmail of dictatorships — and to do so in a way that leads to constitutional government rather than buttressing a police state. So far governments have chosen appeasement and bribery — if at times some torture when demands for investigations rise — and so time is running out for the entire region.
There are a million Muslims in Israel — the mother of all evils in the radical Islamic mind. Yet very few have turned themselves into global jihadists, and hundreds are not blowing themselves up daily in Tel Aviv, much less in London or New York. Why? Perhaps the twofold knowledge that they have rights in Israel not found in the Arab world that they don’t wish to forfeit, and they are surrounded by people who would not tolerate their terrorism.
For the first time, Afghans and Iraqis have a stake in their own future — and know the United States is at last on the right side of history and intends to stay and win by their side.
So we press on."
Re: Weekend Commentary ... Middle East headed towards a 'civil war' ?
A little revolution now and then is a good thing.
They need to realize America's revolution happens every four years and is a bit more bloodless than theirs. Perhaps someday they may get the idea.