By Miklos K. Radvanyi

On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush went before both houses of Congress and defined the 9/11 attacks as unlawful acts of belligerency, and named al Qaeda responsible for them. The President also stated that al Qaeda was “linked to many other organizations in different countries,” commanding a “radical network of terrorists”, including such entities as the Taliban, rulers of Afghanistan. The President summed up his administration’s objectives thus: (the) “war on terrorism begins with al Qaeda...(it) will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” To accomplish these objectives, the United States will avail of “every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war.”

Almost from its inception, the war on terrorism has been controversial both in the United States and abroad. On the same day the President spoke, Katha Pollitt published her piece entitled “Put Out No Flags” in “The Nation”. In it she stated: “It (the flag of the United States) has to bear a wide range of meanings, from simple, dignified sorrow to the violent anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry that has already resulted in murder, vandalism, and arson around the country and harassment on New York City streets and campuses.” A few days later on October 4, 2001, in the “London Review of Books” Eric Foner, a history professor from Columbia University, pontificated: “I am not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House.”

Angst about the United States’ intentions and actions has fed latent and even violent anti-Americanism in Europe, the Middle East and South-East Asia. Immediately after the regime change in Afghanistan, the prospect of removing Saddam Hussein and his clan from power elicited a wave of violent demonstrations by leftist organizations against the United States. In these demonstrations the United States was repeatedly denounced as a “terrorist state”, the CIA depicted as worse than al Qeada, and President Bush compared unfavorably to Adolf Hitler. Only days into the Iraqi war, “antiglobalization” and “social justice” advocacy groups organized more violent protests against the United States and its allies.

Today, almost four years after 9/11, the United States military is engaged on several fronts against what is commonly called Islamic terrorism. Historically, any political-military conflict has three dimensions: the past, the present and the future. Presently, ideologues and liars control all three dimensions. For obvious reasons, neither ideologues nor liars should monopolize the past or the future. In this most important conflict nobody really understands the past as it relates to this brand of terrorism, and very few represent the future. In view of the controversy and the protracted character of this political-military conflict, we need to reexamine our understanding of the roots and the true nature of “Islamic terrorism.” Our knowledge of those roots will help us unmask the lies and distortions of Islamic terrorists and secure for future generations an order based on freedom, justice and the dignity of man.

In his book entitled “Seven Days of Avraham Bogatir”, Gyorgy G. Kardos, the Hungarian novelist, tells a true story from World War II. The Greek partisans captured a female Italian fascist. During the night, her guard called Yanis raped her. Somehow, Yanis’ commander learned about the crime. First, he ordered Yanis to cut open the prisoner’s thighs and pour a pound of salt into her wounds. Then, the commander instructed another partisan to tie up the wounds. Finally, Yanis and his prisoner were locked up in a small cell. Throughout the night, the poor girl screamed with pain. When the door of the cell was opened in the morning, Yanis was dead, hanging from the ceiling, and the girl was dying too.

Surely, the commander had his justification. Mussolini’s Italy, then a fascist state and a colonial power, invaded Greece. The Italian military committed crimes of unimaginable proportions against the civilian population. Greece, a state that barely regained her sovereignty, was fighting for her survival against a militarily far superior enemy. Yet, could the actions of the commander be justified rationally, ethically and politically? If not, then was the commander wrong? Does the end justify the means? What if the overall policy objective is right, but its implementation is less than perfect? Do tactically reprehensible acts negate the ultimate correctness of a policy? What about Afghanistan and Iraq? What about Guantanamo and Abu Graib? What about the liberation of the Iraqi people? What about reforms and the prospect of democracy in the Middle East and beyond?

Today, the overwhelming majority in the academia and in the media, both within and outside the United States, condemn President Bush’s foreign policy as politically suicidal, humanly indefensible and morally wrong. In short, according to these critics, the President and his administration are on the wrong side of history. A devastating verdict, indeed. Yet also a destructive one, rooted in the simplistic and misguided ideology of the French revolution and the teachings of its two extremist spiritual spin-offs, Socialism and Fascism. This so-called sophisticated and refined criticism, promoted aggressively by the liberal and leftist intelligentsia is, in reality, the credo of intellectual negativism and historical nihilism.

To understand why the French revolution was and remains an enduring political tragedy one must only study pre-revolutionary French history that was a never ending chain of tragedies. Prior to 1789, the French people never learned the art of living together in peace and justice. Although France produced many brilliant individuals, they mostly spent their talents in criticizing and even destroying the past and the present. The vast majority of French philosophers and political thinkers availed themselves of inventing abstract theories with elitist disregard of the actual problems faced by the individuals that they so eagerly wanted to save. Moreover, by attacking the past and the present, they weakened both the political institutions of the state and the religious heritage of France. In keeping with that tradition, the French revolution also declared an all-out war on the “Old Regime” and Judeo-Christian values. It unleashed the indiscriminate terror of popular impulses, including universal hatred. At the same time, leaders of the revolution undertook to transform human society and even human nature by the application of systematic violence. In their blind hatred they did not discriminate. They destroyed everything, but offered only ideology instead of principles, fanaticism instead of prudence, fanciful rights of an abstract “people” instead of well-balanced, prescribed rights and obligations of the individual, utopia instead of pragmatism, unbridled power for an elitist group of fanatic ideologues instead of representative government. In short, the French revolution was a disaster because its theoreticians and leaders, Turgot, Concordet, Rousseau, Marat, Robespierre and others advocated and sought irresponsible power. According to them, the vision of a future earthly paradise justified the bloody means of their conduct. At the end, the French revolution remained the unfinished business of dangerous ideologues and an enduring edifice for an ephemeral victory of abstract theory over prudence rooted in human experience.

In its original incarnation, Socialism embraced both the rather impractical proposition of abstract and universal human rights and the instinctive desire of imminent earthly material gratification for the economically disadvantaged. This dual purpose of socialist teachings predetermined the negative character of Socialism as a political movement. Karl Marx and his “scientific socialism” only added a violent ethos to this inherent negativism. First, by designating materialism the prime mover of history and the major factor in shaping spiritual, moral and religious developments, Marx dehumanized both, the individual and society. Second, by declaring the demise of Capitalism historically inevitable, he denied any alternative to Socialism. Thirdly, by introducing the necessity of class struggle to hasten the fall of Capitalism, he cleared the way for a dictatorship of self-appointed bureaucrats that ravaged half of Europe and a large part of the developing world for an entire century.

The violent overthrow of the legitimate government in Russia by Lenin and his gang in1917 was the triumph of a more extreme abstract theory than that of the French revolution over reality. Robbed of its moral foundation, doomed to maintain the ethos of permanent class struggle and held hostage to a utopian yearning for accelerated development, Socialism became a political system without cultural foundation and a tool of irresponsible mass incitement. Thus, the schizophrenia of Socialism was obvious. On the one hand, the socialists wanted to function as a political party like any other political party in a pluralistic society, but with its own distinctively monopolistic ideology. On the other hand, however, it tried to appeal shamelessly to the uneducated and pauperized masses with the promise of an earthly paradise. This utopia’s motto, that the masses can only lose their chains in exchange for a better world, was and is a big lie convincingly attested to by the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites.

Yet, amidst the ruins of Socialism, there remains an enduring legacy of unbound hatred, incitement, violence and destruction. A monstrous edifice of negative utopia held together by the solidarity of blind hatred for free societies that prevented the victorious establishment of a corrupt, immoral, inefficient and violent universal world order. Socialism’s revenge had first materialized in Western Europe through the writings and actions of its leading intellectuals. Later, Ostpolitik and Eurocommunism were promoted by serious politicians as reform alternatives to Soviet communism. Cynically enough, they humanized the latter and ridiculed democracy, particularly democracy in the United States, as inhuman, predatory, imperialistic and oppressive. Moreover, to divert attention from the obvious bankruptcy of the Soviet experiment, basic differences between democracy and dictatorship were declared relative. Morals and law, science and arts, religion and spirituality were all emptied of their inherent values. Good and evil, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly were rendered meaningless.

Meanwhile, societies within the orbit of the Soviet Union disintegrated and are still on a fast track toward certain failure, due to their collective inability to adopt their mentality to their changed circumstances. The individual not only lost his freedom, he was totally abandoned by society. No one was responsible. Neither was the communist party, the “vanguard of the proletariat”, responsible. Its members placed themselves above the law and the state. In spite of limited reforms, glasnost and perestroika, all foolish theories designed to deceive the West, but so dear to the hearts and minds of European and American intellectuals on the left, Soviet Socialism, i.e. Communism, succumbed to the political, economic, social and cultural realities of the real world.

Fascism, the other extreme ideology rooted in the French revolution, is Socialism with the lethal dimension of racism. Racism endowed Socialism’s politics of hatred with the attribute of being the noblest form of nationalism. The degree of hatred a person exhibited toward others not belonging to his or her nation or religion determined the intensity of that person’s patriotism. Thus, in Hitler’s Germany, and after 1945 in Stalin’s Soviet Union, politics did not control the ideology of hatred. On the contrary, politics was totally subordinated to the orgy of hatred.

Socialism’s and Fascism’s propagation and practice of mass destruction and annihilation were collective sins. Their legacy poisoned traditional moral values and legitimized for the future a satanic ethics, the ethics of negation and anarchy. The spiritual heirs to this ideology of universal hatred of the French revolution, Socialism and Fascism are the Islamic terrorists of the twenty first century. Contrary to their claims, their brand of terrorism has neither religious nor ideological basis in Islam. Rather, ideologically and politically, this terrorism is a European inspired phenomenon. Like “anti-globalization”, “social justice” and the various environmental movements, terrorsim is viewed by the majority of European intellectuals and their misguided colleagues in the United States as a continuation of the protracted struggle between Capitalism and Socialism for world domination. Finally, this terrorism has very little to do with the righteous uprising of the oppressed masses against their rulers. But it has everything to do with the obsession of a few fanatic Muslim intellectuals to attain absolute power.

Introducing European-style modernization started by Mohammed Ali during his reign of more than forty years in the nineteenth century, in Egypt. Ali’s failure was due principally to his inability to enlist the support of Egypt’s great families and to facilitate the emergence of a politically and commercially viable middle class. The modernization of Turkey following World War I was also undertaken by Kemal Ataturk along the lines of European modernization. Stubborn adherence to despotic traditions coupled with the monopoly of the military over political power, made Ataturk’s reforms incomplete. Lack of individual freedoms and commercial liberties was a source of intense disappointment.

Anti-Westernization in its form as anti-Europeanization did not emerge in the Muslim world until the late 1920s and early 1930s. Rashid Ridha, a disciple of Mohammed Abduh, and Hassan al-Banna, the founder of Muslim Brotherhood, rejected any form of Westernization and asserted the moral supremacy of Islam over the political and cultural institutions of colonial Europe. They both insisted that Muslims should fight a two-front war. Locally, Muslims must overthrow their inept and corrupt despots. Internationally, they must oppose European hegemony. Theoretically, Ridha and al-Banna strived to reconcile the socialist ideas of political struggle and material egalitarianism with Islamic traditions. In doing so, the Muslim Brotherhood embraced the violent and illegal methods of secrecy and political assassinations of the Russian anarchists and Soviet communists.

Meanwhile, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Husseini, exploited social discontent, nationalism and religion to incite the Arabs of Palestine against the British and the Jews. His unscrupulous modus operandi and his reliance on frequent assassinations precluded any serious political opposition to his fascist rule. As a result of escalating Arab terrorism, Nazi-Germany decided to support the Mufti and his movement. On July 15, 1937, the Mufti told the German Consul-General in Jerusalem, W. Dohle, that the Palestinian Arabs were united in their “sympathy for the new Germany”. But it was not only the Mufti’s burgeoning relationship with Nazi-Germany that made his ilk of fascism so dangerous. The Mufti’s views, deeply influenced by the Nazis fascist ideology and his diplomatic initiatives quickly became the single unifying political cause celebre of the entire Arab world. Throughout World War II, Nazi propaganda praised the Arab terrorists as freedom fighters. In turn, the Mufti and his followers did everything in their power to weaken Great Britain in Palestine, the Middle East and North Africa.

During the years 1948-1967, pan-Arab ideologies were the rage of the Muslim world. The Iraqi statesman, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz, a leading proponent of conservative pan-Arabism, likened the position of the Arabs in Islam to that of the Russians in world communism. The radical strain of pan-Arabism, however, became far more influential than its conservative counterpart. Leading ideologists of the former, Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din Bitar and Akram Hawrani, formed in 1953 the Arab Socialist Ba’th Party. As the only organized pan-Arab political party, it quickly expanded throughout the Middle East and gained political power in Syria and Iraq. The party’s official ideology was described as “left-wing, revolutionary and socialist”, by its proponents. Recurring political and military defeats of existing regimes caused their violent replacement by self-styled revolutionaries, who intermittently established autocratic regimes. These new leaders were mostly military officers who exhibited neither above average intelligence nor any desire to institute meaningful reforms in their countries. Hateful speeches and proclamations laced with crude communist and racist rhetoric substituted for real political initiatives. Domestic terror against the well-to-do and the intelligentsia was designed to cater political support among the impoverished population, itself consumed by bottomless resentment and hatred against the status quo. Finally, in order to maintain their absolute power, these autocrats placed themselves under the protection of the Soviet Union. The heady decades of pan-Arabism came to an abrupt end by the defeat of the Arab armies in the war of 1967. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the political symbol of pan-Arabism, died soon thereafter.

The war in 1967 also affected the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), an umbrella entity for a variety of terrorist groups. Among Palestinians there was a very strong feeling of disillusionment at the overwhelming inferiority of the Arab armies, and a great feeling of indignation at the incompetence of political leadership. These sentiments were clearly directed against those, in the Arab world and elsewhere, whom the Palestinians blamed for threatening their quest for survival, and for preventing them from achieving their goal, the destruction of Israel. Several skyjacking incidents involving Israeli and other Western commercial flights, the Munich massacre of 1972, and other random terrorist acts attested to the unyielding hatred of the PLO toward the United States and Israel in particular, and the West in general. After the Yom Kippur War in 1973, both the United States and the Soviet Union attempted to mediate between Egypt and Israel. Long suspicious of Arab governments, especially Egypt and Jordan, and stung by U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, that acknowledged the existence of the state of Israel, Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, decided to counterattack. Practically in every Warsaw Pact country secret bases and camps were set up by the KGB and local secret services to train PLO terrorists. Cooperation among Romania, Libya and the PLO was designed to develop and produce highly sophisticated conventional, biological and chemical weapons to be used against the United States, Israel and Western Europe. “Fraternal liaison offices” between PLO and Warsaw Pact intelligence services were organized throughout the world. The PLO also established close collaboration with the Japanese Red Army, the Italian Red Brigades, the German Baader-Meinhof gang, and other foreign terrorist groups.

On the political-ideological front, there was no disagreement among the various groups that comprised the PLO. According to them, the only way to solve the many problems of the Arab world was to emulate the Soviet and Eastern European model of “real” or “scientific” Socialism. Their principal objective was to exploit the Warsaw Pact as a source of diplomatic, military and financial assistance, and to overthrow those Arab governments that did not sufficiently supported the PLO. With monies extracted from
the latter, Palestinian terrorist organizations established schools to indoctrinate the youth, and networks of social services to win the hearts and souls of the people. Trying to destroy the credibility of Arab governments that according to them either practiced “sham” Socialism or “evil” Capitalism, they contrasted the purity of their “revolutionary” movement – i.e., the liberation and modernization of the Arab world, with the inherent corruption and ideological bankruptcy of those governments. The international corollary of this campaign was the tenacious pursuit of Nazi-Germany’s fascist strategy to designate the Jews as Zionists and thus racists. In the 1970s several resolutions were adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, United Nations’ sponsored and communist organized conferences declaring “Zionism” as a form of racism and racial discrimination. The objective of these efforts was to link the United States to Israel and to identify anti-Americanism with anti-Semitism. The invisible hand beyond all this was obvious. The indirect approach to weaken the United States and her allies was a technique extensively used by the Soviet Union.

The fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 proved that the political ideas of the French revolution, Socialism and Fascism were more powerful than Islamic doctrine and history. Khomeini’s Islamic “revolution” was nothing but a cover-up to conceal the European character of his “Islamic state.” Summary trials and executions of ideologically deviant individuals, mass exodus of refugees, wholesale confiscation of industries and private property, the establishment of a centrally controlled judiciary, the organization of the Revolutionary Guards and numerous vigilante groups such as Ansar Hezbollah, the creation of the all powerful Guardian Council, lawlessness and violent indoctrination attest more to the ideology and practice of Robespierre, Hitler and Stalin, than to the teachings of Mohammed and Ali. Regardless of what Western experts and the media said and wrote, Islam did not play a decisive ideological role in Khomeini’s regime, and was mainly used by him as a tool to seize and maintain absolute power.

His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also called the supreme leader, whose scholarly credentials were questioned even by his peers in Qom and Mashad, based his rule on a written constitution and a subservient parliament. Moreover, like the French, the Soviets and the Germans in their time, the Iranian regime embarked on a two-pronged policy to deceive the international as well as the domestic audiences. Since the regime’s appeal was obviously strongest amongst the poor and disenfranchised Shi’its, Lebanon and Jordan became the primary targets of exporting Iran’s Islamic “revolution.” The regime rejected nationalism and compared it to “blasphemy” and derided it as a conspiracy of “colonialists.” Quite incongruously, the regime promoted a type of internationalism characterized by the principle of the “export of revolution.” The latter means the Shi’ite version of global jihad. Its execution is entrusted to the Iranian Pasdarans who practice terrorism as a tactic of foreign policy. The main enemies are the little Israeli Satan and, quite obviously, the greater American “Devil.”

After shattering Saddam Hussein’s forces in February 1991, then President George H. W. Bush decided to end hostilities without occupying Iraq and overthrowing the regime. The failure to liberate Iraq from domestic tyranny left Saudi Arabia and other smaller countries in the region exposed to renewed Iraqi aggression. This, in turn, facilitated a decision to maintain a permanent American military presence in Saudi Arabia. Claiming to be offended by the occupation of the true “Holy Land”, namely Arabia, where the Prophet Mohammed was born and promulgated the Qu’ran, Osama bin Laden, scion of a wealthy Saudi family, declared war (jihad) on the House of Saud and its modern “crusader” ally, the United States of America. The message that he thus communicated to the rulers of his country was very clear: In order to overthrow you, I must defeat your protector too. To bolster his cause bin Laden was searching for a theoretical underpinning. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Wahhabism did not play a major role in the formulation of bin Laden’s ideology. This he found in the teachings of the Pakistani Abu–al–A’la Mawdudi and his Egyptian disciple Sayyid Qutb.

Mawdudi was a revolutionary thinker in the most destructive sense of the word. He claimed that “sovereignty belongs to none but Allah.” Such an assumption is of course profoundly, indeed absurdly false, within Islam. In principle, all Muslims believe in the doctrine “no god but God.” Mawdudi, however, transcended traditional Islamic theology by elevating politics to the level of divinity. Political legitimacy is no more transferable to humans. Neither can political legitimacy reside in elected representatives. Thus the principle of the rule of law is equally absurd. Individual rights are only recognized if they are identical to the laws of God. Political sovereignty is the exclusive domain of God. His disciple, Sayyid Qutb, even went further when he declared: “God is thus the only legitimate authority and the only source of the Law: He is Legislator. Man owes obeisance only to Him. And since men are created free and responsible, they are responsible towards God. If man wants to be realistic, he must choose submission to the only authority that exercises genuine sovereignty: God. Political leaders, monarchs, saints, angels or spirits, rabbis or priests can never exercise authority through themselves.”

This doctrine was not about political toleration. It is the doctrine of total war and terror against everybody who is different. If accepted, it would cement the tyranny of a small clerical establishment over everything, creating a totalitarian regime comparable only to its European predecessors. This is exactly the kind of negativism and nihilism devoid of reality and stooped into destructively abstract theories that brought about untold human tragedies upon Europe throughout three centuries.

A series of terrorist operations in New York City, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania and Yemen were the precursors of 9/11. On February 23, 1998, Osama bin Laden and four of his closest aids, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, published their
“Declaration of Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jews”, which pointed to an all-out holy war against the United States and its allies. The political credo of this declaration
was global destruction of every government both in the Muslim countries and elsewhere. The religious ideology contained in the declaration was adopted from the teachings of Mawdudi and Qutb. Like the Salafi’s of the nineteenth and the Muslim Brotherhood of the early twentieth centuries, the goal of this newest offshoot of this terrorism was to fight the West, and change the world along the ideologies of Socialism and Fascism. As recently as on the eve of the Iraqi elections, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the self-proclaimed leader of Iraq;s al-Qaeda, declared war on democracy: “We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology….. Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it.”

In the spirit of “this wrong ideology”, then President Ronald Reagan delivered his famous “Evil Empire” speech to the British House of Commons on June 8, 1982. In it he said: “Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.” Neither do evil ideologies that can offer no positive vision, but only destructive hatred and self-delusory lies. Again, in another remarkable speech, made at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on June 12, 1987, the President called upon the leader of the “Evil Empire”: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” These two messages of democracy had deadly political consequences for the Soviet Union. By destroying the myth of Soviet-style Communism as a truly democratic and free political system, President Reagan de-legitimized the dictatorship of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. President Reagan was right in another respect too. He understood the centrality of ideology in the Soviet system. This was a crucial point, for the West before him did never fully deal with the Communist ideology as the basis of the regime’s political credibility.

In a speech at George Washington University, on August 6, 1996, President Clinton defined terrorism “the enemy of our generation.” He stated that “America must act and lead against terrorism.” He concluded that “This will be a long, hard struggle.”

On September 23, 1999, George W. Bush gave a speech on foreign policy and national security at the Citadel. His speech had a clear message and a detailed foreign and defense policy plan. In it he emphasized four points: 1. Freedom is the precondition of peace; 2. “Democratic Peace”; 3. The transformation of the military into a more effective and efficient fighting force; 4. The war on terrorism at home and abroad. Before and after 9/11 President Bush followed closely his plan. The overriding themes of his two inaugural addresses were democracy and freedom. During his first term in the White House, he denied bases to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the process, the totalitarian Taliban movement was dismantled and Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship was eliminated. In both countries successful free elections were held.

Clearly, each situation is unique. There are no simple problems. Neither are there easy solutions. In Afghanistan the enemy was both within and on the outside.
For historical reasons, the country was a strange mixture of a unified, yet fragmented society. The people were divided over the Taliban, but united against Osama bin Laden and his fellow foreign terrorists. Islamic terrorism was viewed by the vast majority of the Afghan people as foreign and even alien phenomenon. Therefore, its proponents had no roots in Afghanistan. The defeat of the Talibans meant the disappearance of those terrorists as a political factor.

Because of Saddam Hussein’s break with the other Arab countries over Kuwait, the enemy in Iraq was primarily within the country. Moreover, since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, Iraq resembled a Soviet-style state. For these reasons, the regime’s fury and its political, economic, cultural, religious and ethnic woes existed horizontally rather than vertically. The result was a political “salami tactic” as practiced by the Soviet Union against its own people and minorities, and against the oppressed nations of Central and Eastern Europe. This politics of hatred of one ethnic and religious group against another was centrally managed. After the ten year war with Iran and the 1991 defeat of the Iraqi military in Kuwait, the country became poorer and the regime turned increasingly more violent. In the deteriorating political and economic climate people grew meaner and more hate-filled by the day. When Saddam Hussein was finally removed from power Iraqis were reduced to Kurds and Shi’its fighting the Sunnis, their former oppressors. Since the history of the Middle East always revolved around two extremes – dominance or death -, there was never much room for lasting compromise.

The success of the recent elections in Iraq proved that democracy and freedom are viable policies against this type of terrorism. The challenge is now to defend the achievements and to expand the reach of this strategy. Clearly, the political stakes are very high. On the outcome of the war on terrorism aimed at Western civilization depends the future of the entire world. This future is too important to be left to irresponsible intellectuals and ideologically tainted journalists. Their objective is to weaken the United States by proving that President Bush’s policy and actions are the problem, not terrorism. The President’s foes are wrong in two important aspects. In their blind hatred toward him they completely lost their political prudence. And, by failing to distinguish between good and evil, they have become the protagonists of the very evil that must be defeated decisively. Theirs is an aggressive intellectual position devoid of moral conviction and political alternatives.

At the beginning of her military campaign to reverse Argentina’s illegal seizure of the Falklands in 1982, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said: “Failure? The possibilities do not exist.” She was paraphrasing Queen Victoria: “We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.” The Queen said that in 1899, during the “Black Week” in the Boer War, when things were going badly for Great Britain.

There is no real alternative to the President Bush’s policy and methods of the war on terrorism. In this war we obviously must rely on military force. Equally important, however, that this force have to be augmented by an ideology superior to the sheer capacity of small, extremist groups to spread disinformation and outright lies about the rest of the world and also about their intentions. What should that ideology be?

The most important should be to de-globalize not the war, but the ideology of anti-terrorism. We have to understand and explain the world that while terrorism must be fought globally with force, the ideology of anti-terrorism is one of respect and differentiation among various cultures and civilizations.

Historically on the religious level, Jews, Christians and Muslims all agree that Abraham is the father of all mankind. It is also undisputed in the three religions that the God of Abraham is the God of all mankind. Finally, they all believe in one God. There are no individual gods for the Jews, or the Christians, or the Muslims. To believe otherwise would promote polytheism that is disavowed by all of them. Yet, the one-God dogma does not exclude the actual existence of three separate faiths. In their beliefs and methods regarding the expansion of their faiths, there are also discernible differences among them. Judaism is almost self-contained. Christianity is a proselytizing religion, the intensity of which fluctuated throughout history. Islam is a more aggressive religion. It was born in conquests and expanded mainly through military campaigns. From its inception, religion and politically or ideologically motivated murders were twin phenomena of Middle Eastern history.

Yet, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have a long past, a firm present and perhaps an infinite future. For the sake of global stability and peace they must learn to coexist. Extremist minorities using religion to further their violent agendas should not be allowed to hijack any faith. Truly religious people are secure in their faith. They never feel threatened by the faith of others. Conversely, those who lack religious conviction and moral authority are inherently insecure. Extremism by its very definition means an extralegal quest to acquire power over the majority from a minority position. That is why terrorists are operating outside the legal, moral and religious framework of societies. That is why they hate everything that stands in their way to absolute power.

On the surface, terrorism suggests courage, boldness, even total disregard for their own and other people’s lives. In reality, their bravado is opportunistic and driven by desperation. The logic of suicidal terrorists is not self-assured confidence in the righteousness of their cause. Rather, terrorism is the extreme manifestation of insecurity and cowardice. The terrorists’ strategy is deliberate targeting of places where unarmed and unsuspecting people socialize in peace. The act of martyrdom is just another case in point. The faith in the ultimate sacrifice for their cause, exhibited by those brainwashed young people, is nothing but mindless submission by command to nihilist individuals devoid of any positive vision of man, life, religion and society. As stated earlier, there are no instant solutions. But there is a joint political responsibility and a religious obligation to envision a more stable and peaceful future. In the midst of all the local and global problems and challenges, the United States, in a more decisive manner, must lead the way toward a harmonious cultural and religious diversity.

Politically, the main challenge is building a democratic Iraq. The key to meet this challenge successfully is the new constitution that should entail the following principles. First, the idea of the democratic republic of Iraq must be enshrined in the preamble of the constitution, signifying the importance of unity in diversity. Under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, the communist notion of “you are either with us, or against us”, served the political purpose of atomizing society in order to prevent the people from uniting against the regime. Second, the guiding principle of a democratic Iraq must be secularism. This principle should go beyond the traditional doctrine of separation of state and church. On the other hand, it must also be stated that the separation of politics from religion is not anti-Islam. In reality, it must be a scrupulous neutrality of the political institutions toward any church or religion, and vice versa. Third, there must be a strong central government augmented by regional governments with clearly defined powers. Here the principle of diversity in unity must be respected. Fourth, the principles of free market economy must be included in the constitution. In order to combat corruption in public life and the monopolization of the major institutions of the economy, the rights and
responsibilities of financial, economic and business entities must be enumerated unequivocally. Also, a fully independent central bank responsible for setting monetary policy, is an absolute requirement. Fifth, the importance of an independent judiciary cannot be overemphasized. Political power must be subordinated to the law. Sixth, the dignity of the individual and the protection of his rights are of paramount importance. General equality, the equality of women, freedom of association, freedom of speech, property rights, the sanctity of contracts must be guaranteed. With such a constitution Iraq could become an example of democratic transformation and modernization throughout the Middle East.

Stable democracy also needs a majority of people secure in their existence. In too many countries transformation from dictatorship to democracy failed because conditions were not created to counter-balance the overwhelming political and economic advantage of the old elite. The resulting stagnation strengthened the status quo with inherent iniquities. This, in turn, had devastating political and economic consequences. Politically, it led to cynicism toward democracy and to outright anti-Americanism. Economically, it created more poverty and existential insecurity to the vast majority of the population. Since the three major power bases in Iraq do not have shared historical values but deep-seated instincts of political self-preservation and economic self-
interests, only a strong middle class can establish a new system of common political values within the framework of an enforceable legal system. Suspicions among Shi’its, Kurds and Sunnis are very strong. To forge a truly unified Iraq, governed by the twin principles of tolerance and inclusion, political and economic powers must be distributed more equitably. No other formula will work in Iraq.

The aim of the terrorists in Iraq is to prevent the democratic transformation of society. The objective of the neighboring Arab governments, with the notable exception of Iran, is to protect their countries from possible negative consequences of the developments in Iraq. Iran alone is interested in prolonging the American military presence. Seemingly, this policy contradicts the Iranian leadership’s utter rejection of a secular and democratic Iraq. However, from Iranian perspective, it serves the country’s interests. Thus, Iran pursues a three-pronged foreign policy. It supports terrorism inside Iraq. It also attempts to control the Iraqi Shi’its politically and financially. Finally, Iran maintains pressure on Iraq’s neighbors through other terrorist organizations outside Iraq.

And herein lies an opportunity for American diplomacy. All affected Arab countries are interested in peace and stability in the region. Iran’s actions indicate that its policy is detrimental to both. Moreover, Iran’s military buildup, especially its aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons, is a threat to their existence. Syria is humiliated and isolated. The reaction of the Lebanese people to the murder of Rafiq Hariri was a total shock to the
generals and old guard politicians in Damascus. They see democracy gaining the upper hand in Lebanon and Iraq. They don’t like these developments. Internationally, they feel
isolated. Domestically, they are concerned about their future. Cracks within the unified elite are inevitable. Like Libya before, Syria is ready to abandon its long standing anti-
Americanism and join the West.

Again, Islam is not the enemy. The overwhelming majority of Muslims are not the enemy. Arab governments are not the enemy. The real enemies of civilization are those terrorists who represent the worst of European thinking, Socialism and Fascism, and their embittered soul-mates in the West.

The protection of Western civilization should be our most important objective. The war will continue, soldiers and diplomats will have full employment. Yet the division over Iraq must not result in a festering split between the United States and Europe. The terrorists of the twenty first century and the governments in the Middle East and South East Asia do not really have much in common. The latter know that they must modernize and reform. The terrorists’ goal to eliminate the West does not leave room for any meaningful compromise with the Muslim majority. Theoretically, the terrorists could make common cause with the disgruntled Left in the West. But they are no match for the military, economic and moral superiority of the West. At the end, the forces of freedom and democracy will win because they represent a positive future. And terrorists will lose because negativism and nihilism never made people content and happy.

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