Losing The War

According to Reuters, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon Clinton administration counterterrorism officials, say the U.S. is losing war on terror.

Sadly, Benjamin and Simon have joined the defeatists saying that our strategy in the War on Terror has created a new haven for terrorism in Iraq and escalates the potential for Islamic violence against Europe and the United States.

Benjamin and Simon seem to have forgotten that in their 2002 book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," they explain that the roots of Islamic extremism which spawns evildoers like Osama Bin Laden lies in the anger and frustration from all the difficulties under which they live—the poverty, unemployment, oppression. The only way to eliminate the roots of the extremist movements is to give these people hope. To do that requires freedom and democracy. These sentiments are also expressed by Professor Bernard Lewis.

In December 2003, the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal published an article by Lewis, entitled “Democracy and the Enemies of Freedom.” In that article Lewis sets forth the objectives of the American military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq: first and more immediate, to deter and defeat terrorism; second, to bring freedom and democracy, to these countries and the rest of the Middle East. Lewis writes that while establishing democracy in the Middle East will not be quick or easy, history suggests it is possible.

The creation of a free society, as the history of existing democracies in the world makes clear, is no easy matter. The experience of the Turkish republic over the last half century and of some other Muslim countries more recently has demonstrated two things: first, that it is indeed very difficult to create a democracy in such a society, and second, that although difficult, it is not impossible.

The study of Islamic history and of the vast and rich Islamic political literature encourages the belief that it may well be possible to develop democratic institutions--not necessarily in our Western definition of that much misused term, but in one deriving from their own history and culture, and ensuring, in their way, limited government under law, consultation and openness, in a civilized and humane society. There is enough in the traditional culture of Islam on the one hand and the modern experience of the Muslim peoples on the other to provide the basis for an advance towards freedom in the true sense of that word.

Lewis then explains that we are engaged in a titanic struggle of global dimensions. If you read his books and grasp what type of civilization the terrorists want to impose on the entire world, you understand that we must not only take on this fight; we have to win it.

The war against terror and the quest for freedom are inextricably linked, and neither can succeed without the other. The struggle is no longer limited to one or two countries, as some Westerners still manage to believe. It has acquired first a regional and then a global dimension, with profound consequences for all of us.

The new defeatism that Benjamin and Simon, have now joined is not helpful and must bring a smile to the cave dwelling Bin Laden.

Can the suggestions Reuters attributes Benjamin and Simon make a more substantial contribution to draining the swamp than liberating 50 million people from the oppression of tyrants? No one is opposed to "expanding middle-class influence in countries such as Pakistan" or easing "regional tensions that feed Muslim grievances across the globe, from Thailand and the Philippines to Chechnya and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Those "regional tensions," cited by Benjamin and Simon, stem from the same poverty, unemployment, oppression cited in "The Age of Sacred Terror". How can these suggestions be achieved absent the strategy of spreading freedom and democracy.

President Bush understands what is at stake in this struggle and has set us on the correct, probably the only course, which can guarantee that our way of life survives. The president's forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East is the best, if not only comprehensive stategy for draining the swamp in which the evildoers are spawned.

We may lose the war, but only if public support continues to decline as a result of the defeatism and negativity from opinion shapers and experts like Benjamin and Simon.
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Reuters: Experts say US is losing war on terror

Comments

[Matthew Shugart]

Dan, this is a very important post, and I want to thank you for stopping by Fruits and Votes to call my attention to it.

I have responded at length in the comments at Fruits and Votes.