On Sept. 11, our country received a wake up call. But have we listened? No.
Sept. 11 was not the result of an isolated group of criminals, but rather, the culmination of decades of appeasement towards an ideology: Islamic fundamentalism.
Islamic beliefs dictate that mysticism, collectivism, and altruism are the ideals that should be strived for by the one true faith: Islam. All who disagree with this are infidels, or evil powers, or a “great satan,” etc. The religion of Islam dictates that it is the duty of the members of its faith to declare jihad (holy war) against all those who oppose Islam. Most of the individuals in our world who follow such a religion do not accept that it is their duty to engage in jihad against the opponents of Islam. However, certain individuals DO accept that it is their duty to sacrifice themselves to Allah in order to rid the world of all opponents of Islam.
The clearest opponents of mysticism, collectivism, and altruism would be a country whose fundamental values are reason, egoism, and capitalism. That country, while it struggles with its own philosophy is America. America was founded on the ideals of reason, egoism, and capitalism, and all of the success and greatness that America has achieved has been a result of that. In the eyes of Islam, America is the opposite of everything that they hold to be ideal.
In the past 30 years, advocates of Islamic fundamentalism have gradually increased their jihad on America and other pro-America allies (such as Israel), in the attempt to eradicate reason, egoism, and capitalism from the face of the earth. According to Onkar Ghate in his op-ed, “Don’t Blame Our Intelligence–Blame Our Unprincipled Foreign Policy:
In 1979 theocratic Iran—which has spearheaded the “Islamic Revolution"—stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 54 Americans hostage for over a year. In 1983 the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group Hezbollah bombed a U.S. marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 servicemen while they slept; the explosives came from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. In 1998 al-Qaeda blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 individuals. In 2000 al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.
So we already knew that al-Qaeda was actively engaged in attacking Americans. We even had evidence that agents connected to al-Qaeda had been responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. And we knew in 1996 that bin Laden had made an overt declaration of war against the “Satan” America.
Islamic fundamentalists have been engaging in a jihad against America for a long time now. How did America respond to such a threat?
America either ignored or appeased the Islamic fundamentalists whenever they committed an act of terrorism against us. Instead of eliminating a very weak threat, the American government allowed the Islamic fundamentalist movement to grow in power, despite the attacks against us. In fact, the American government even aided and put into power certain regimes based on a jihad against America! (The rationale at the time was that if we gave power to regimes in the Middle East, they would be able to block the communist advance of Russia and China into the Middle East, which is utterly ridiculous). For further evidence of the results of appeasing and ignoring the Islamic fundamentalists, please consult my 7/30/03 post, The Consequences of Advocating Israel’s Suicide.
As I said, Sept. 11 was a wake up call for all of America. We realized that such a policy of appeasing terrorism will only embolden our enemies and allow them to grow stronger. Thus, President Bush firmly declared that we will hunt down and eliminate terrorist organizations that threaten the United States and eliminate the regimes which support them.
But President Bush has not done so, as I have clearly indicated in many posts here on my blog.
The primary reason why President Bush has failed to do so, in my opinion, is that he has failed to identify that we are fighting against an ideology, not a band of criminals. This ideology, Islamic fundamentalism, is dominant (in some cases in different variants) in places such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the Palestinian territories, and many others. The governments of these countries are either controlled or heavily influenced by Islamic fundamentalists, and many support numerous Islamic terrorist organizations.
It seems that the American public has resigned itself to accept that terrorism is an unstoppable force which can only be appeased or “prevented” through things like the Homeland Security department. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, did the American public resign itself to accept that Japanese bombings of America would become a regular occurence? Hell no they didn’t!
Terrorism IS NOT an unstoppable force. Islamic terrorism can be deprived of its power to inflict harm and terror on the United States. But, in order to do so, the policies of the past MUST be abandoned. We must NOT appease terrorist organizations, which means ANY terrorist organization, and we must identify the enemy which we are fighting: Islamic fundamentalism. This means, the end to “negotiations” with the Palestinian terrorists, the identification of the strongholds of Islamic fundamentalism: Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the removal of these regimes.
