Ed Ross | Monday, May 27, 2013
President Obama's fundamental disregard for the nature of Islamic terrorism, no doubt, has Islamist-jihadists around the world cheering.
In essence, President Obama’s counterterrorism strategy is to do what he did in Iraq and soon will do in Afghanistan—declare victory and go home. The only problem with that strategy is that the enemy hasn't conceded defeat and, sensing weakness, will only strive harder to strike American interests.
Islamist-jihadists aren't the foreign and domestic enemies we were used to. They're different from communists, fascists, and the Mafia. They aren’t predominantly gangsters masquerading as patriots and businessmen. They are true believers, working in groups or alone to do the will of Allah.
In their willingness to martyr themselves they are not unlike early Christian martyrs; and we know how successful the Romans were at controlling them. Christianity absorbed the Roman Empire, not the other way around—a fact Islamist-jihadists are acutely aware of.
As I pointed out in a previous column “Why Muslim Terrorists Want to Kill Us and Some Young Muslim Men Want to Become Terrorists,” there are approximately 1.7 billion Muslims in the world. If only 2% of them engage in or support Islamist-jihadist activities, that’s 34 million people—a potential enemy force almost double the combined size of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese armed forces at the height of World War II.
As for addressing grievances of those Muslims inclined to become terrorists, the fact that we exist tops their list followed by our access and influence in Islamic countries and our support for Israel. Nothing short of conversion to Islam and submission to Sharia law and the Caliphate will satisfy them. They are not going away in our lifetimes; and they will not give up on killing Americans whenever and wherever they can.
When we decimate one al-Qai’da group, as we did al-Qai’da on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, they will only pop up elsewhere as they have on the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.
Given President Obama’s statement that we will only attack “specific” terrorist groups and individuals that directly threaten U.S. interests and his policy of leading from behind in the struggle to thwart Islamists’ rise to power in the Middle East, we can expect more terrorist attacks not fewer.
So how do we deal with this threat without the Muslim world believing we have declared war on Islam, one of the world's great religions?
First, and most important, we must stop pretending that we are not at war with Muslims, inspired by their radical interpretation of Islam, that seek to violently impose their vision of a new world order. The Qu’ran is not a terrorists’ handbook; but it provides Islamist-jihadist justification for their actions.
We must understand that the rise of Islamist-jihadism is as much about chaos in the Islamic world as it is about us. It’s about clashes between Sunni and Shia Muslims and secular Muslims that seek to take their place in the modern world and those that reject modernity. Muslim terrorists kill more Muslims than non-Muslims.
We must, therefore, adopt policies and practices that encourage the overwhelming number of Muslins that don’t support Islamist-jihadist terror to cooperate with us in publically and aggressively opposing it. Without them we cannot ultimately triumph.
Muslims are becoming an ever larger segment of the world population as well as the population of European countries, also targets of terror, where Muslims are not well integrated into European societies. Outreach to Muslim communities and countries is essential, but not if it reinforces separation from the communities and the world in which they exist.
Domestically we must more actively seek Muslim support. Internationally, we must actively and aggressively aid those groups in predominately Muslim countries that seek true democracy and individual freedom. At the moment they are losing out to the theocrats and the Muslim Brotherhood....
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