By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) If one can get past the minutiae of the bickering in the West over the war, (resolutions for pullout, whining about Halliburton making too much money, etc.) what is manifest clearly is a lack of understanding what the war is all about and what is at stake. The place to start is with the Islamics.
They are motivated by an eschatological view that sees the struggle with the West building to a cataclysmic battle that will result in the entire world placed under the domination of Islam (see among many sources “The Fight for Jerusalem” by Dore Gold, Regnery Publishing, Inc. Washington DC 2007, Introduction). Their subjugation of Jerusalem and building the Caliphate are essential ingredients of this vision. But what do policy makers in the West see?
Being for the most part secularist, they dismiss such apocalyptic visions contemptuously, pointing out similar views are voiced only at tent revival meetings in the rural south. (Yet our Southern Baptist friends don’t have their hands on the instruments of apocalypse as the Islamics soon will, if they don’t already). And since the secularist mind doesn’t grasp (cannot grasp) the religious significance of what’s motivating our enemies, they lapse into what they know best: Marxist economic causality.
Suicide bombing is caused by poverty, they suggest. If we’d just share the wealth, it would all go away. Or terrorism is caused by fighting it, and if we’d stop, it’d all go away -- what I call the George Soros thesis, a view pushed by his moveon.org and most of the mainstream media in the West. Thus appeasement and accommodation are the solution to the problem with Islam in secularist eyes. Accommodate the cab drivers in Minnesota, twist Israeli arms to force more “land for peace” concessions, pull out of Iraq! The view makes perfect sense: if only it were true.
The Clinton Administration didn’t fight terror, treating it as a “police problem”. Yet the attacks grew in ferocity and frequency. The 9/11 hijackers and the London tube bombers of 7/11/05 were all educated and middle class, not poverty stricken! So were the bombers apprehended last summer in London as they tried to bring down a dozen airliners over the Atlantic. Yet the secular mind persists in its myth.
The Islamics, for their part, smell blood. Rather than being satiated by concessions, they are invigorated. It brings their vision a step closer. Israel pulling out of Gaza in August 2005 is a case in point. Rather than removing an Islamic grievance that was accepted gratefully, it was considered a victory for Islamic arms and brought the rocket launchers that much closer to the heart of Israel. Pulling out of Iraq and handing it on a platter to the Iranian Mullahs will have a similar effect. Rather than bringing peace, it will move us a step closer the Caliphate and the cataclysmic apocalypse, sooner rather than later.