Jihad Watch
After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era – that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law; that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out. "Enemies who did not abide by any law of war." Really? Jihadists from Osama bin Laden to lone attackers like Mohammed Taheri-Azar cite Islamic texts and history extensively to justify their actions, both with respect to the rationale and goals for fighting (see, for example, 8:39, 9:5, 9:29) and the methods they use (5:33, 5:38, 47:4). Indeed, matters from the need (and divine approval) for revenge (2:178) to the treatment of captives (4:3) are all covered therein and followed by jihadists the world over who continually "misunderstand" the "peaceful" and "humane" teachings of Islam with striking uniformity.
Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that – too often – our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us – Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens – fell silent.
"Our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions." To paraphrase a well-known slogan, "Yes, You Did!" And the Bush administration did as well. Decisions were made on the basis of fear, and facts and evidence were indeed trimmed to fit ideological predispositions -- specifically, of political correctness. The unwillingness to engage the jihadist ideology in its proper context of Islamic scripture and jurisprudence has hobbled efforts in the War on Terror/Hirabah/Man-Caused Disasters/Your-Euphemism-Here since 9/11, and even before. More on that below.
In other words, we went off course. And this is not my assessment alone. It was an assessment that was shared by the American people, who nominated candidates for President from both major parties who, despite our many differences, called for a new approach – one that rejected torture, and recognized the imperative of closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Setting aside for the moment the Senate's clear disagreement on the Guantanamo issue, have we gone off course? Well, yes, but not in the way Obama thinks. For that matter, in several important ways, we were never on course in the first place:
- Our goals in Afghanistan: The goal of preventing another 9/11 seems to have fallen by the wayside in favor of winning "hearts and minds," currying favor with duplicitous allies, and propping up a democracy for its own sake. Yes, Afghanistan has an elected president and legislature, but it also endorses Sharia as the highest law in the land (naturally, without repudiating or even admitting the existence of tenets of Sharia that are at variance with human rights), and shows a distinctive tendency to throw human rights out the window save for intense international scrutiny and criticism (see, for example Abdel-Rahman, Syed Parwez Kambakhsh, and most recently, the Shi'ite family law).
- The opium trade: To avoid "radicalizing" local populations and win "hearts and minds," the West for years looked the other way from the opium trade despite not only the social impact of opiate addiction, but also the source of funding it provided for the Taliban to regroup.
- Ideology: Above all, willful denial of the basis for acts of jihadist violence in the Qur'an and the sayings and life of Muhammad, as well as for the human rights violations enshrined in Sharia law, sets back Western efforts to prevent jihadist warfare and the advancement of the jihadist agenda impose Sharia law. If the problem is understood to involve "misunderstanding" of Islam or a Tiny Minority of Extremists, it is being vastly and perpetually underestimated. If a sense of dogmatic relativism prevents criticism of Islamic teachings from a Western perspective (both Judeo-Christian and secular-democratic), we are disarmed of a right or reason to prefer one system over another. And if we have already surrendered our right to identify, examine, and criticize the ideology of the jihadist enemy (rather than naïvely outsourcing the job to "sensitive" Islamic or "interfaith" groups), we have already surrendered. It would be difficult to get any more "off course" than that.
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