Rummy Gets It Wrong

Once again, I understand the tactical desire of the Bush Administration to not want to unnecessarily take on "more than we can chew" (at least at one time) in the GWOT, but this comment of SecDef Don Rumsfeld is just appalling:

The West has been caught up in a fight within Islam that pits religious militants against the large majority of Muslim moderates, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday.

"This is not a war between the United States and the Muslim faith, or between the West and the Muslim faith. It is a struggle within the Muslim faith, between the extremists and the moderates, with the extremists representing an extremely small minority," Rumsfeld told a Dallas business group by phone from Abilene, Texas.

Muslim moderates in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering the heaviest toll from attacks by extremist groups, he said. "The targets of these terrorists are more often than not other Muslims - such as the Iraqi children they murdered last month while taking candy from American forces," he said.

You know, I am so sick of this "extremists vs. moderates" canard. We use it vis-a-vie the Iranian mullahgarchy, we used it during the Cold War. Every time we face a bitter, implacable enemy we retreat to this meme's comforting folds in order to delude ourselves that they aren't as big a threat as they seem, or that "right-wing warmongers" are making them out to be. It's used as an excuse by Foggy Bottom types for endlessly futile diplomatic diddling while the actual threat just keeps growing and growing and growing. And the rest of us are reduced to crossing our fingers, holding our breath, and praying that the day of reckoning doesn't arrive before common sense can be revived.

I hate to say it, but "Big Dog" is delusional.

This is not a "Muslim civil war." It most definitely is a war between the West and the Muslim faith - or, rather, a war by the Muslim faith on the West. The fact that we're not fighting the entire Muslim world is almost a non sequitur, because by that very same "logic" one could argue that during the Cold War we weren't standing off the "entire Russian people" but just a "tiny extremist minority." The catch was that that "tiny extremist minority" (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union never numbered more than a tenth of the total population of the USSR) was ruling the Evil Empire and intent upon ultimately destroying us. Ditto Nazi Germany before and during World War II.

Those aren't even the closest historical parallels. A better one is Imperial Japan during the Second World War, which had most of the same elements we face today: an alien culture steeped in a quasi-religious fanaticism that made little distinction between military and civilian personnel, employed suicide bombers (kamikazes), and whose civilian population was prepared to die in mass banzai charges right along side their soldiers. And, I might add, had developed an ample arsenal of chemical and biological weapons and were not far from perfecting some exotic means of delivering them against American West Coast cities.

Those in the Japanese leadership who wanted to commit national suicide rather than surrender had a gaping achilles heel: Emperor Hirohito. Considered a deistic figure, Hirohito had the power by making a single radio broadcast to turn the tattered remnants of his devastated nation from war to peace. When he did so after the two U.S. nuclear strikes, the war was over.

We have no such advantage in the current conflict. Islam is fragmented into numerous sects and branches, often warring against each other. But the one thing that unifies them is the fanatical Koranic teachings of "holy" war against the "infidel" and the hatred of Israel and the "crusader" West that those teachings have incubated, which is how the Shiite mullahs in Tehran can harbor and support a Sunni terror group like al Qaeda. And, just as in past confrontations, 90+% of the enemy population isn't actively belligerent against us. But, unlike in past confrontations, the vast majority of that 90+% are passively belligerent, and their "holy" book powerfully reinforces that belligerency - as Rummy, ironically, went on to concede:

Rumsfeld said fundamentalist groups have made their intentions clear, and he again cited the statement from a London cleric who said after the July 7 bombings there that he "would like to see the Islamic flag fly, not only over Number 10 Downing Street, but over the whole world."

If Islam was not a religion of war, aggression, and conquest, it would not be "fundamentalist groups" that make such statements.

This commonality does not auger for peace, but its opposite number. Ditto our utter failure to spread liberation to Damascus and Tehran as well and complete the clean sweep of the "Arab crescent."

We have successfully "pushed back" against the enemy that has been attacking us for a generation. But until we come to grips with his true nature and scope, and finish the job we started almost four years ago, the final outcome of this, yes, clash of civilizations will remain in substantial doubt.

UPDATE: Ain't gonna be no ten years 'till the mullahs can make us glow....