Vindicating the Islamists

The Islamists mock our will to fight and win.  Will we prove them wrong?

By Gregory Faulkner

One of the tenets of radical Islam’s strategy is that the United States is weak-willed, and will do little more than equivocate or vacillate in the face of threats.  The Islamists are confident that they can, quite literally, get away with murder.  ‘Don’t worry,’ they say to themselves, ‘the Americans have no staying power; they grow war-weary after a few years and will beat the quickest path home.’

This attitude is addressed by famed Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis in an op-ed for Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, in which the author details the contempt that many Arabs have for American might:

[More]"During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers.  If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: ‘What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?’"

America’s propensity for self-flagellation and weakness, Lewis continues, rendered the United States "subject to unremitting criticism and sometimes deadly attack," while the Soviet Union, whose empire included vast swathes of Muslim lands in the Caucasus and Central Asia, was almost entirely exempt from scorn.  This, despite the Kremlin’s hostility to faith of any kind.   He elaborates:

"In the Muslim perception there has been, since the time of the Prophet, an ongoing struggle between the two world religions, Christendom and Islam, for the privilege and opportunity to bring salvation to the rest of humankind, removing whatever obstacles there might be in their path.  For a long time, the main enemy was seen, with some plausibility, as being the West, and some Muslims were, naturally enough, willing to accept what help they could get against that enemy.  This explains the widespread support in the Arab countries and in some other places first for the Third Reich and, after its collapse, for the Soviet Union.  These were the main enemies of the West, and therefore natural allies."

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, however, hardened Muslim attitudes towards the Evil Empire, and legions of young fighters streamed to Central Asia to defend the faith.  Once the Red Army and its allies had been defeated, the Osama bin Laden-led Islamists turned their sights on what they believed would be an easier target – the soft and decadent U.S.

The U.S. response to 9/11, therefore, came as a "shock" to the Islamists, and caused many of them to reconsider their estimation of America’s mettle.  Unfortunately, and with distressing consequences for this country’s security, the recent wilting of America’s will to fight the war in Iraq to its conclusion has given the radicals renewed confidence in their original consideration of America.  As Lewis observes:

"recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory.  It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view.  If they are right, the consequences–both for Islam and for America–will be deep, wide and lasting."

There should be no doubt – this war is a test of American resolve against an enemy that will not quit.  We must be strong enough to see it through to victory.