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| How Reagan Would Handle Islamism - The Brussels Journal |
| 2006-10-20 |
| From the desk of Joshua Trevino My colleague at The Remedy, Ryan Williams, is not much younger than me — he was eight when Reagan left office, and I was thirteen — but the age difference is enough, I trust, that I may remember with some greater clarity one of the key features of Reagan’s anti-Communist rhetoric: it did not buy into the basic premises of the enemy. It did not concede, at least rhetorically, the commanding role of the state, nor the Hegelian/Marxist march of history, nor the forced perfectibility of man, nor the founding nobility of the Communist enterprise. Reagan’s genius was to recall the American people, and to a lesser extent the West, to the need to proceed from the premises of our Founders: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the inalienable rights of man, and government as existing merely to secure their just exercise. One did not win arguments with Communism when accepting Communist starting-points for those arguments. They led inevitably to the Communist end, and appeals to humanity were steamrolled by appeals to inexorable logic. In dealing with Islamism in the present day, we make the very error that Reagan eschewed with the Communists. We proceed from Islamist premises — namely, that Islam is inherently peaceful; that it is inherently sane; that it is inherently just; and that it is a welcome and benign participant in our post-modern public square. One may not accuse George W. Bush in particular of failing to render a full obeisance on these points. Attendant to this are all manner of details that somehow fall outside the bounds of acceptable discourse in Muslim eyes, and hence in the eyes of any who fear violence. Most recently, we see the shutting-down, by murder and by fire, of any critique or perceived disrespect of the Muslim founder. Reasonable people of any faith may find Muhammed an admirable figure. Or they may examine the historical record and conclude that Muhammed was a violent visionary who slaughtered the defenseless and violated a nine-year old; but state these things in public, and deathly ire stalks the speaker — or, if he is not available, his co-religionists. What victory may we aspire to so long as the most basic freedoms are thus quelled? There is not an exact parallel here with the state of discourse in the Communist era, but there is parallel enough. Certainly few outside the Communist nations were hunted and killed for merely denigrating Marx or Lenin. But there was a long-running campaign of dissuasion, especially in western Europe and amongst the American elites, directed against those with the bad form to be too anti-Communist. The excuses given for being soft on the horrors of Communism varied from era to era: there was a need to support the Popular Front; there was a need to stay united against the facists; the Soviets sacrificed so much in the war; we have to focus upon our own (American) sins; and the top two — the original intent was noble, and we must not alienate the moderates. In these last, we see an exact parallel with the apologists for Islam and Islamism today. We perform kowtow to the founding mythos of our opponents, and we indulge in the fantasy that some adherents of jihad and Islamism are more palatable than others. Mr Williams engages in this error when he refers to the need to reach out to “the moderate Muslim world” — which should, in a just world, and if it even exists, be reaching out to us with all manner of apology and regret — and in his faith that our Founding message that “resistance to tyrants is obedience to God” will be well-received by these “moderates.” Suffice it to say that they already agree with this sentiment, and further do not believe that we have the slightest thing to do with the God that must be obeyed. We are, rather, the tyrants to be resisted. Like Milton’s Satan who would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven, the average Muslim whom we face abroad much prefers some manner of shari’a (to which Williams refers as a dissuading factor) to the humiliation of life on the terms of the irreligious, secular West. We cannot hold this against them: they have the integrity of their faith, and it is their choice. But it does not follow from this that we must credit them with moral equality to ourselves — assuming we have a moral standing worthy of the name — and it does not follow from this that because they have integrity, that they are good. The answer for us infidels is not respect — beyond that due the individual with his inalienable rights — but frankness even at the cost of disrespect, and exclusion of the foe’s ideas and ideologues from our public square till a general sanity among them prevails. The ill-kept secret of Communism to which the elites adhered was that it was in its origins a squalid, murderous creed. Its founder was a moral leper, and its heroes were savages are surely as any pre-modern tribesman. It took a brave survivor of the Soviet Union’s concentration camp system, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, to state this truth plainly and irrefutably — and it took Ronald Reagan to make it policy, and enact it as the will of the American people. That is the lesson of Reagan’s war for ours. In a contest of ideas, truth and victory are inseparable companions. We only delay the latter in eschewing the former. We may call it politeness, or respect, or strategy: but it looks like defeat. Btw, one commenter (an homonym of RB's very own Robert Crawford) at the link has a counter-argument : In short, Reagan prevailed over the Sovs because of their innate Western nature. This will not work when facing the Musselmen. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #8 Shouldn't single out Reagan for critique on his handling of the muzzies. Yes, pulling out after the Lebanon bombing was bad, in retrospect, but future historians will undoubtedly conclude that in historical context it was no better or worse than what American policy for two administrations prior to him and two after him. His actions fit into the prevailing wisdom and meme set at that time. This isn't to let him off the hook from a practical standpoint. Certainly his actions contributed to the current confidence the Islamostalinists have. But the paradigm shift in the policy field would take another twenty years. (Kind of like presidents and Congresses doing nothing about slavery for decades until Reconstruction, even though in retrospect they blew several opportunities to end it prior to that.) |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2006-10-20 18:40 |
| #7 Oldspook nails it. Unfortunately, even the theory of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) worked with the USSR because they were sane. The islamofascists on the other hand, are not, so it doesn't even pay to "negotiate" with them, only exterminate them. |
| Posted by: BA 2006-10-20 15:40 |
| #6 As much as I hate to admit it, a part of why we won the cold war without a big hot nuke was that the Russians loved their children too. Islamofascists on the other hand dress theirs up as suicide bombers. |
| Posted by: Oldspook 2006-10-20 15:17 |
| #5 Plus, w/the commies, we were not dealing w/a tribal culture that went back 1,000 years. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2006-10-20 13:51 |
| #4 In short, Reagan prevailed over the Sovs because of their innate Western nature. Whether I agree with Mr. crawford or not this sentence caught my eye. Though we held differing beliefs in the righhtness of our political systems and differed on many things, in some way the russians and Americans saw the same future. Wanted thhe same type of egalitarian tech-fueled futuristic lifestyle and imagined a future of soaring greatness. To this end, even during the height of the cold war we collaborated in space. There is no such cultural, societal intersection with the forces of ISlam. What they want is iinimical to our vision of thhe future, annd vice-versa. |
| Posted by: J.D. Lux 2006-10-20 13:04 |
| #3 "In dealing with Islamism in the present day, we make the very error that Reagan eschewed with the Communists." But we repeat the very error that Reagan made with the Islamists. Do we win a prize? |
| Posted by: Flea 2006-10-20 10:48 |
| #2 I prefer the "Hoof and Mouth" solution, personally. |
| Posted by: mojo 2006-10-20 10:23 |
| #1 The real Reagan had a less than stellar record in confronting islamism (just recall his cut and run reaction to the bombings of the Marines barracks in Beyrouth). Now he had lived in a world where Communism was the main threat and could have failed to perceive the need to confront Islam. It is unfair to say as Robert crawford's homonyms seems to think he would have cut and run in a post 9/11 world when it became clear that we have a new deathly foe facing us. However whatever what the real Reagan would have done we need to inject some Reaganim into the WOT: - Proudly reassert our values and fight the self-haters who undermine our will to fight and add fuel to Islamist propaganda - Take the offensive in the ideological field. Stiop this BS that Islam is areligion of peace. It isn't. We could tell that there are good peole between Muslims but that is because they are bad Muslims. The intrinsic ideology in Islam is evil (1). That is what we should be saying -Tell that Jihad was never more that organuized staeling and Hadj the way for those riches not staying into second class Muslm hands but going to Arabian (ie from Arabia) hands. Challenge that dirt poor Bangladesh finances that Saudi fat cats: where in Coran it is said that Hadj has to be the lucrative business it is presntly for Meccans? -Play the fractures in the Mulim world. Encourage nationalist (not panarabist (2)) movements in the Muslim world: people who loathe the idea that their country's culture is inferior and that they should imitate Arabs, people who are tired of seeing their country's hard earned money going to fatten the Suadis through the hadj, people who see Islam as a factor of backwardness and poverty. Have a hundred Ataturks sprounting everywhere in the Muslim world. -Challenge the Muslims to "Tear down that wall against apostasy" and suggest that only fear keeps people in Islam. 1) One of Reagan's main collaborators had a meeting with his staff and told them to picture how ould be life in Russia in the hypothesis that Russia's economy wasn't growing at 5% per year like claimied by the Soviet statistics but was near stagnation. And the picture was remarkably like actual Russia: long lines even for basic products like toilet paper, low quality goods and so on. Now let's imagine what would have happenned if Muhammad was merely a megalomaniac gangster who created a religion in order to enrich himself and get all the pussy he wanted. We could expect him asking for a percentage of the booty collected by his henchmen (Muhammad collected 20% of the fruits of jihad), we could expect all kinds of atrocities against opponents (cf the number of dissidents he had murdered by his henchmen), we could expect him breaking his word when suitable (cf how he wiped out a Jewish tribe after an oppotune "dream" told him Allah alowed him to break the treaty), we could expect him raping captives, we could expect him tailoring the rules specially for him (he allowed himself ten spouses instead of four and ruled he to repudiate them at his whim. Of course, as usual Allah sent him dreams giving him the authorization). Last but not least we could expect hios companions fight over the spoils at his death: only one of the five "enlightened Caliphs" (ie who had been Muhammad's companions) wasn't assasinated. (2) Since the only big accomplishment the Arabs have ever done is the Islkamic conquests secular panarabism leads very easily to pride aboutn the islamic conquests and then to islamism. BTW one of Abdul Wahab's main ideas was the supremacy of Arabians over mere Arab-speakers and still more over non-Arab Muslims. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-10-20 08:44 |