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June 18, 2005

The Avoidable Genocide

We are coming to a dangerous crossroads. In America in particular, increasing numbers of people have tired of being at war. The steady dribble of casualties - small in historical terms - has been blown all out of proportion by the domestic forces of defeatism - particularly odious are those who would be fine with America winning, so long as the Republicans didn't get credit. The normal, slow course of counter-insurgency, the whining of the domestic Left, the self-seeking politicians, and the receding sense of direct threat to America combine to weary those who simply don't focus much on anything except direct threats to them. Much of the American public is being lulled. This QandO analysis of a Victor Davis Hansen essay makes the essential dichotomy clear.

Ironically, this is a byproduct not of failure, but of success: we have done such a good job of disrupting the large terrorist organizations and eating alive the core of the jihadi movement, who come to Iraq to fight our soldiers rather than to America to attack our civilians, that the immediacy of the threat has been reduced. So long as we continue to aggressively pursue the fight. Because when we stop, give up, go home and once more doze in contemplation of the end of history.

The ability of the United States to make war depends on our willingness to make war. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the only way for any country at present to actually defeat the United States in war is to make us weary of the fight, give up and go home. And our desire to minimize the destructiveness of war, on both our own people and enemy civilians (and increasingly, even on enemy combatants), mitigates against our fighting the kind of war we can win swiftly. We could end the insurgency in Iraq in 3 months, were we willing to destroy the Sunni Arab population of Iraq in order to do so; we are not.

But there is a serious, often unstated problem with giving up. Once we leave the field, we see ourselves as our enemy sees us: defeated. And as the aftermath of Viet Nam showed, such a defeat makes further action politically impossible. In the 1970s, we could not have defended any place but Europe and maybe Japan from attack, because politically we would have prevented our government from doing so. Even in the 1980s, there was a serious, strong, determined and sustained movement to prevent the United States from protecting Europe! Younger readers may not remember, but there was in fact a serious effort to convince the United States to disarm unilaterally even up to the point that the Soviet Union dissolved.

And in the Middle East, today, such a mistake - giving up our ability to fight against a threat - would be fatal. Not to us - well, not to us collectively, anyway - but to the Arab world. Consider the consequences:

If the United States pulls the threat of military engagement from the Middle East, Iraq would pretty much immediately fall into chaos. Conventional invasions from Syria and Iran are possible, but more likely would be a full-scale civil war, culminating in either a dictatorship of the Sunnis or a Shia theocracy similar to neighboring Iran. In the process, we would have lost every single base that the United States has in the region: as an untrustworthy ally, those that were not conquered would be closed by our former friends, now eager to distance themselves from us as far and fast as possible. (Read up on what happened after the fall of the Shah in the late 1970s.) This would further complicate any American attempts to use force in the region.

With the US not engaged, and with the world focused on Iraq's slide into chaos, the likelihood of Iran developing weapons within five years approaches certainty. Pakistan might even decide, in order to prevent Musharraf's fall, to open sell nuclear weapons to Muslim states. This means that with every year that passes, with democracies and Western leaning tyrannies in the Middle East falling in succession to the Islamists, the realization of a caliphate becomes progressively more likely. Even without that, there is still the problem of two or more nuclear armed states with a history of supporting terrorism.

We probably wouldn't be the first target of nuclear terrorism; that would more likely be Israel. After all, with the United States removed from the region, paralyzed with self-doubt and recriminations, Israel is both a bigger threat and a bigger opportunity.

Funny thing about Israel: Israel has nuclear weapons, too. A lot of them. Enough to destroy every Arab population center of any reasonable size. And if Tel Aviv were destroyed, what possible reason could Israel have to restrain from destroying every Arab population center of any reasonable size? After all, Israel's very existence would be in doubt. They take "never again" more seriously than does the rest of the world.

But let's say that the Arabs manage to destroy Israel so completely that only a few Arab cities can be obliterated. This would throw the West into further anguish, as after all Israel is an American ally, and we should have done "something" (never actually specified) to prevent this outcome. (Those who suggest, at that point, that withdrawing from Iraq was the cause of this situation will be shouted down, vilified.) And now the Arabs would have a real claim on victimhood - because after all, it wasn't those innocent civilians that destroyed the Israeli cities, and it wasn't they who marched in and slaughtered the Jews wherever they found them. So again the West would likely not act.

Having barely dodged utter destruction would not make nearly the impression on the Muslim world that their victory would: yes, they lost a few million people, but the state of Israel was destroyed; the hated Jews were slaughtered. Surely Allah had brought this blessing. Surely Allah would allow the Muslims to retake Andalusia (Spain), the Balkans, and how about the rest of Europe while we're at it?

Now maybe the French or the British would react, and maybe they wouldn't. How far they would go is anyone's guess. Let's just assume that the French allow themselves to fall under Muslim rule, along with the rest of continental Europe, and the British kicked out the more troublesome Muslim immigrants and formed a closer alliance with the United States. This is pretty much a best-case outcome for the jihadis, by the way. Now, they have a larger and more sophisticated nuclear arsenal (France's), and a larger population and resource base.

Would they be satisfied? Well, their doctrine, endlessly restated, is that the Muslim caliphate must extend over the entire world. But the US would still stand, and in fact we'd be the only enemy of note besides China and India that the Muslims would have to worry about. The order isn't important: neither China nor the US nor India would suffer a nuclear attack without responding, and neither country would give up its identity. As such, whichever major enemy was the next target of jihadism (my guess would be India) would be quite likely to utterly destroy the Arab world.

And fundamentally, that is the problem with withdrawal: the enemy doesn't recognize an end to the war short of their complete control of the entire planet. But there are forces in the world that will withdraw and withdraw - until they reach a certain point. And one of those forces - likely Israel, potentially France (not very likely), and certainly India, China or the US - would eventually be pushed against the wall where it is very clearly "us or them". None of these civilizations, except possibly France, would choose "them."

The only way to be sure that there will be a Muslim world in 50 years is to defeat, now, the elements within Islam that are incapable of compromise or coexistence. And in the end, it will less likely be us, than our children, who will be around to face that end, if we fail now.

Posted by jeff at June 18, 2005 9:57 PM

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» Excellent Essay on the War from Save The GOP
Jeff Medcalf at Caerdroia has a must-read post on the war around the world against Islamic terrorists. This is some of the best stuff I have read on this topic since Sept. 11th. Again, this is a must-read. We are coming to a dangerous crossroads. ... [Read More]

Tracked on June 19, 2005 10:12 AM

Comments

Posted by: Brian at June 19, 2005 12:25 AM

Posted by: Mike at June 19, 2005 10:08 AM