It's OK to be Alone and Right

With Spain and Honduras pulling their troops from Iraq, and Thailand considering the same, with the continued criticism of the US from most nations (and even many Americans) for the act of defending itself, with the fragility of many of our allies (especially Tony Blair) and with the ease of retreating in the face of terror instead of confronting it (at least, until it's defend yourself now or die now), Americans need to prepare themselves for the possibility that we will be fighting this war nearly alone.

In a way, we are in much the same position that Great Britain was in at the start of the Napoleonic wars: the most free nation on Earth, with tyranny battering at the doors, most European nations ignoring the tyranny (until they were invaded) or actively colluding with it, and many neutrals more afraid of France than needy of British trade. This situation persisted for more than a decade. Britain was in a similar position after Germany took Europe and before the US came into the war. In both cases, it would have been easier for Britain to surrender than to fight, but in both cases they were on the right side, and they fought, and they prevailed.

Now we must be prepared to do the same. In particular, we must begin to prepare to win the long-term war even if we have no allies. There are some concrete steps to take.

First, we need to mean it when we say you're with us or with the terrorists. Those nations that want to play the middle game should be marginalized. We can do that with trade pressure, travel restrictions, and using other nations to box in those who oppose us, but not openly. In particular, we should stop giving foreign aid to any nation for any reason if they are not entirely cooperative in the Terror Wars.

We must be prepared to fight Iran, Syria/Lebanon/Hizbollah, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, N. Korea (because of their role in nuclear proliferation) and Pakistan at the very least. With luck and hard work, we won't have to fight all of them. I believe we will have to fight Iran and Syria at least, and likely Saudi Arabia.

We can fight them in sequence with the troops we have, but then we'd just have to keep fighting; to win the war in the end, we must democratize the Arab world (the only alternative is genocide, and no sane person wants to go there). As a consequence, we will have to occupy the nations we've taken - and we have to be prepared to occupy them all by ourselves - for a long time, potentially a decade or even longer. To do this, we must begin raising troop levels now; reorganization is not enough to maintain this pace. We must be prepared to focus the government on this task, even if it means sacrificing programs for Americans at home, or increasing taxes, or both.

We have to be prepared to destroy our enemies utterly, even if that means civilian casualties. It's useless to win the war without killing our enemies; Iraq should teach us this. We must be prepared to remake Islam by force, if necessary killing those who believe or who preach that it is the duty of Muslims to conquer everyone else.

We have to be prepared to face up to ugly truths about other cultures; they are not all sweetness and light. To do this, we must constantly wage the war of ideas here at home, marginalizing those who want us to lose, who refuse to see a difference between us and the terrorists, or who are more concerned with gaining political power than protecting the Constitution and the citizens. We can do this in print, at the polls, in popular culture and in conversations.

We have to be prepared to accept that there are some people who will never love freedom, never love America. We have to be prepared to accept that we cannot convince these people to change their minds, and we have to be prepared to accept that some of these people are Americans.

If we cannot conquer the idea of Islamism, Islamists will continue to attempt to destroy us. Eventually, they will get nuclear weapons; already the capability is dangerously close to ubiquitous. If the jihadis get nuclear weapons, they will use them on the US and on Israel. In the end, if we are not prepared to do these other things, then we have to be prepared to commit genocide, or to be victims of genocide.

It is possible that, within five years, we will be alone. We should be ready to win anyway: it is better to be alone and alive than popular and dead.

UPDATE: See also Winds of Change, where Trent Telenko and Armed Liberal both have interesting and related things to say.

Posted by Jeff at April 22, 2004 10:01 AM | Link Cosmos