Who Are We Fighting? And why?

Our old friend Øyvind, with whom we disagree vigorously about the war, writes in: (Since when do we use the royal we? -Ed. I don't know, I don't like it either.)

I read this piece today (http://www.cenedella.com/stone/archives/000971.html) , and I felt like provoking a bit, so here it goes. Allow me to play the devil’s advocate one moment here, and say: the war on terror is bogus. Yes, that’s right, bogus. Not only that, we are doomed to lose the war too. I can already hear people saying ”Whaaaat?! He’s speaking treason! Burn the heretic!” But hear me out here. The premise for this war is apparently to root out al-Qaeda-cells as we find them, and perhaps some affiliated groups if we can. Maybe bomb some minor country a bit after a terrorist attack. All fine and dandy, the public seems to like it. But it’s just treating the symptoms instead of the disease, isn’t it? You don’t fight terrorism by killing the terrorists. These people didn’t just get out of bed one morning and thought ”ah, what a fine day! What should I do today? I know, I’ll bomb some trains or hijack a plane!”. The ultimate goal of al-Qaeda or the suicidebombers of Jerusalem isn’t killing people. It’s to get rid of what they perceive as occupants and colonial forces in their own country/region. These are not evil people, these are desperate people, regarding themselves as freedom fighters (well, I’m not too sure about al-Qaeda, you have som really crazy and misguided people there, I think…). I’m not trying to advocate terror here. They are criminals, and should stand trial. But we shouldn’t neglect their reasons either. You can kill the terrorist, but you can’t kill the idea that made him, can you? Everyone is talking about terrorists, very few ask _why­_ they are terrorists. And I don’t think Bush sums it up when he refers to them as evil enemies of democracy and freedom. So, I’ll repeat; until we understand why terrorists attack, and remove their reason for doing so, we are doomed to lose.

mvh,

Øyvind

Norway

The root cause of terrorism is that these people -- terrorists, Islamo-fascists, Al Qaeda -- want to kill us. Instapundit had a great post yesterday linking to this quote:

Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, summed it up very pithily: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

You can't negotiate with people who kill children for political purposes.

The war in Afghanistan was a direct battle in the War on Terror: root the bad guys out of thier lair. (By the way, if simple labels like good guys-bad guys make you queasy, you need to study the roots of this conflict further. On one side, you have the peoples of teh West engaged in the great historic experiment of democracy and liberliam in the sense of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; on the other, theocrats dedicated to the killing off not just Christian and Jewish civilization (to say nothing of the agnostics, athesits, and pagans you'll find here in my New York City), but even moderate Muslims who don't share their flavor of Islam. If you ca't call those good / bad, you are too weak to defend our fragile experiment.)

The war in Iraq was a strategic battle: Saddam's a bad guy who had been in material violation of 17 different UN resolutions. Now, there are a lot of bad guys out there. But you have to pick your battles. And the goals of this one were twofold: depose a homicidal creep who has billions in oil revenue with which to oppress his people and threaten his neghbors, and more importantly, establish the world's first Arab democracy.

Now why is establishing an Arab democracy so important?

In addition to being a good in itself, it's important because it gives democracy a foothold in Arab lands. And a foothold serves as a tutorial and an inspiration to all the Arab peoples, and as a scold to their rulers. Only by re-making the region into open, free, democratic societies (and, yes, those values are not contradictory with Islam) wil we succeed in addressing the root causes of terrorism -- ignorance, lack of education and freedom, the oppression of women (did you know women can't vote or drive in Saudi Arabia?), and Saudi state support for Wahabbiism. Al Qaeda do not, as you assert, view themselves as freedom fighters. They view themselves as muhdain -- warriors for God. And their pervasion of Islam requires vanquishing the infidel (including the re-conquering of Spain, by the way).

So, Øyvind, I do agree with you in part -- we need to address the root causes. But believing that Cole, 9/11, Bali, Mombassa, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Moscow, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul and Madrid, will simply go away if we ignore the problem, or acceed to their demands, is wrong.

And even if it weren't wrong; even if we could buy peace at the price of cowardice, it would be a temporary peace. For those who win by the sword, who profit by the bomb, rarely retire from the business merely because this year's goals have been met.