Princeton professor of Near Eastern studies Bernard Lewis has quite literally spent his entire life studying the Arab Middle East, and is the foremost scholar in the land on the 1400-year old interaction between Islam and the West. Smart kid.
So when he speaks, the other smart kids tend to listen. You’re a smart kid: Listen to him now:
We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility.
From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks–on the World Trade Center in New York and on U.S. troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000–all of which evoked only angry words, sometimes accompanied by the dispatch of expensive missiles to remote and uninhabited places.
Stage One of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam; Stage Two–to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then. The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated that there had been a major change in the U.S., and that some revision of their assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment, was necessary.
More 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.
Aw. Stupid history.
Are there no intellectuals among the defeatocrats that they can’t understand this? I mean this is not some local yokel talking here. Professor Lewis is the preeminent authority in the west on all thing about the moslems. Are the dems sooooo infected with their hatred of President Bush that they are willing to put future generations of Americans, my grandchildren, at risk rather than step up to the plate and do what is right for the country? Apparently not.
Huh? Saint Bernard just plain has his facts wrong. For one, the Taliban didn’t emerge until 1994, years after the Soviets had quit their occupation of Afghanistan, and after even their puppet had fallen. Moreover, the Taliban are a Pakistani product, created and funded by the Pakistani ISI. They are state-funded thugs created to serve a Pakistani interest, and had nothing to do with the “defeat” of the USSR. Moreover, the relationship between them and UBL was always tenuous, as the Taliban were seen as guilty of “shirk,” of having added to the true Islam. UBL was hardly a leader of the anti-Soviet effort, although he played a part in supplying the heavy machinery necessary to build bunkers, trenches and cave networks. He was subordinate to Abdullah Azzam, who conveniently died with his whole family when his car exploded in, IIRC, 1991. UBL inherited his network, but he did not build it.
Likewise, to claim that “in the Muslim perception” Christianity and Islam are rivals to bring salvation to mankind is flatly absurd, and Lewis knows better. Christianity is a perversion, a polytheistic religion, and as such cannot bring salvation to mankind, but can only mislead mankind to its damnation. Moreover, the connections between Nazism and Islam in the 1930s and 1940s are well-known. The common link was not that Nazism was the enemy of the West, but that it was the enemy of the Jew, and it was on that common basis that Hitler and the Mufti of Jerusalem made their pacts and built their forces, in Bosnia and elsewhere. Why Lewis is being unclear, or even deceptive here, I don’t understand.
Okay, kids, time to turn away from the mirror. Afghanistan was not/NOT the USSR’s Vietnam. They never committed anything like the forces we committed to Vietnam, they never faced a completely hostile press and public over Afghanistan, and they really had largely washed their hands of Afghanistan by 1986, maintaining only minimal forces until the final withdrawal in 1989. Although Koran-soaked fruitcakes like UBL may think so, Afghanistan did not break the USSR’s back, and probably didn’t even do much to contribute to the final collapse.
Will armed Islamists bring about the collapse of the USA? Not hardly. Will their unarmed brethren overrun us, relying on our cultural prejudices to gain the upper hand in every circumstance? Not inevitable, but a Hell of a lot more likely. If the question is, can the West be subverted and defeated, the answer remains emphatically Yes. That Lewis can’t even say that outright is disturbing. He isn’t helping.
Zane,
re- “Christianity is a perversion, a polytheistic religion, and as such cannot bring salvation to mankind, but can only mislead mankind to its damnation”
For us average folks, your intent was to preface this remark with “To Islamists,” or “To devout Muslims,” possibly, eh?
re- “relying on our cultural prejudices’
Please expound.
Lewis last para- “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”
Nancy, Harry, Teddy, the MSM and the rest (including Rep Paul, Sen Hagel, etc.), with unfortunate timing, are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, or is it the other way around?
b2
Weakness, whether it is real, or perceived, will be exploited to its fullest. That is the tendency of war.
Islam will use America’s weakness against her at every opportunity.
The Arabs have long understood that power is something that should be avoided in an adversary. They don’t see that in us.
Here’s where our weakness shines through.
Read this and you should understand:
“ISLAMABAD, 17 May 2007 ?
Here’s where our weakness shines through.
Read this and you should understand:
“ISLAMABAD, 17 May 2007 — Foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) yesterday expressed grave concern at the rising tide of discrimination and intolerance against Muslims, especially in Europe and North America. “It is something that has assumed xenophobic proportions,” they said in unison.”
http://arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=96276&d=17&m=5&y=2007
EJ,
Good link.
“..Islamophobia the worst form of terrorism and called for practical steps to counter it”
No. Suicidal/homocidal bombers (who predominantly happen to be Muslims) are. Do something about it Ministers.
Xenophobic? This is the most hypocritical statement I have ever heard and it comes from those Islamic governments- some our “allies”….We in the West have some Xenophobes, sure..but it seems to me the Islamic World is itself, a culture of monolithic xenophobia which stretches from Morrocco to the Phillipines. Please, someone prove me wrong.
b2
B2,
Yes, that was the Evil Zane speaking when I spoke of the perversion of Christianity. However, no Muslim, not even the most moderate peace-lovin’ ones, believes that the Bible is in any way a true account of the prophet Jesus. In Islam, Christianity is not monotheism, it’s polytheism (three gods in one), and as such is shirk, the sin of adding helpers to Allah. Christians are different than, say, Hindus, because at least Christians had the truth before they perverted it (the true Gospel, in case you didn’t know, was rewritten and perverted and the true Gospel was lost forever, so they say), so Christians are tendered a few token rights that the Hindus wouldn’t be offered (see the Pact of Umar for details), but otherwise they are in the same kafir boat as everyone else.
As to our cultural prejudices, I mean our hard-earned respect for individual conscience, by which any man is welcome to believe in Mohammed or Jesus or David Koresh, and we will all agree to tolerate the other so long as he abides by the civil laws that allow this. I think this is a virtue, a peculiarly Western virtue. We want to assume that any religious man feels the same way, and want to extend that tolerance, even when we are extending it to those who intransigently refuse to accept it, and who plan nothing but our destruction even as they smile in our faces. Just because someone is religious doesn’t mean they are good, or wish us well. Think George W. Bush, who truly means well in extending an olive branch to Muslims, but who completely misunderstands the beast he offers the branch to.
When the attack via tolerance is coupled with the self-hating, suicidal PC tendencies we’ve often discussed here, we create a tremendous opportunity for exploitation by those who wish to overcome us. CAIR knows how to exploit it, MSA knows how to exploit it. If you are not familiar with a document known as The Project, probably written by the leading “moderate” Sunni cleric in the world, Yusuf al Qaradawi, I heartily recommend you find a copy of it and read it. It’s very short, and it lays out exactly the multi-pronged attack on the West that we have seen over the past twenty-five years. It is a handbook on how to use our every weakness against us, as EJ Smith notes they will do. This is a long war, indeed, and our enemies think in the long term. We can’t even think past the primaries to the elections in 1998.
And to tie this all back to Mr Lewis, he’s right that UBL and his ilk think they can take us, and he’s right that the actions of the Democratic Party encourage them, but because he has yet to acknowledge that his beloved Islam is at war with us (as evidenced in the errors of the article that I noted), he fails to perceive that all of his proposed policies for dealing with the Muslim world have failed, abjectly and totally, from the disastrous Oslo Accords to the ill-advised Occupation of Iraq. His own self-inflicted blindness is just as damaging to us in many ways, and just as encouraging to our enemies, as is the foolishness of the Democrats he excoriates. Just remember, twas Bernard Lewis who said “the liberation of Baghdad would make the liberation of Kabul seem like a funeral procession.”
Lex,
Re: Zane
You sure attract some beauties….
Yup, Lex certainly does attract all kinds.
Must be that whole diversity program he’s got going … kind of like an affirmative action policy, I suppose.
Hmmmm….,
Zane,
You might be preaching to the choir.
Just sayin…
Hey, b2 knows I use sledges to kill flies, and he did ask me to expound.