The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

Before discussing the nature of the enemy, I want to say a few words about the mentality of the present age. In reaction to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. placed 114,000 Japanese—many American-born—in detention camps. In reaction to the Muslim attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the U.S. refrained from using “ethnic profiling” at its airports!

In World War II America was a nation in arms. Movie stars enlisted in the army, and Hollywood produced movies exposing the evil of Nazi Germany. Today America is confronted by a greater evil, yet anti-war sentiment prevailed in the U.S. mid-term elections. The significance of 9/11 is virtually unknown.

“Know your enemy” is a basic principle of statecraft. President George W. Bush has yet to really define the enemy. He and various pundits refer to the enemy as “Islamic extremists” or “Islamofascists,” as if the enemy was a fringe group of Muslims that have “hijacked” Islam. But as serious and candid scholars such as Robert Spencer have shown, the enemy is mainstream Islam, Islam per se.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad represents mainstream Islam when he calls for a world without America and Israel—meaning a world without Christianity and Judaism.

But Americans—especially liberal-left-wing politicians, professors, and journalists—cannot take him seriously, no more than their English counterparts in the 1930’s could take Hitler seriously. Perhaps a nuclear-armed Iran will awaken them from their complacency or dogmatic slumbers.

Sixty years separate the attack on the World Trade Center from Pearl Harbor. During this period the university-bred doctrine of moral or cultural relativism permeated the mentality of American (and European) intellectuals. These intellectuals are so overly civilized they can’t take evil seriously. They look upon Islam as something exotic. They try to explain Muslim terrorism as the result of poverty or as a reaction to American foreign policy; and they believe Islamic terrorists can be appeased—for example, by sacrificing Israel. But the issue is not economics, and it’s not what we are or what we do. No, the real issue is the nature of Islam, as we may learn from Syrian-born psychiatrist Wafa Sultan. Dr. Sultan, who renounced her Muslim upbringing—she now lives in California—has said that Islam is barbaric, that it can’t be reformed, that it must be “transformed.” Obviously this is not on the agenda of U.S. foreign policy.

But to say the issue is Islam doesn’t quite define the enemy. Throughout their history, Muslims treated non-Muslims as inferiors, as dhimmis who, in various ways, had to acknowledge the superiority of Muslims. Muslims are not seeking equality. No, the enemy demands to be recognized for his superiority. And he will continue using human bombs to murder non-Muslims until he receives worldwide recognition of his—of Islam’s—vaunted superiority.

The West is thus confronted by its deadliest and most ruthless enemy. This enemy exults in the bloodshed and decapitations of infidels. This enemy denies the sanctity of human life and is obtaining the means of creating a world without America. In comparison with what must be done to overcome this enemy, “ethnic profiling” is a pathetic joke.

The first thing Americans must understand is that we have entered a new era of history, in which our liberal democratic concepts are obsolete. That which we most cherish and which have made us great have also made Islam an existential threat to our civilization. For example: Europe, the home of humanism and religious toleration is becoming Islamized by tolerating the hostile behavior of millions of Muslim residents that scorn humanism and religious toleration.

Or consider the principle of national self-determination. It was this post-World War I principle that allowed Muslims still living in the dark ages to establish Arab-Islamic tyrannies that promote murderous hatred of the West.

John Stuart Mill, a liberal, said “Despotism is a legitimate form of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.” But Mill said that in 1859. Mill was a rational liberal, not a dogmatic liberal. A rational liberal does not apply the principle of national self-determination to people whose religion—Islam—rejects the concept of the nation-state and therefore a world of diverse nations. This rejection makes Islam utterly bellicose and imperialistic, and makes Muslims more ruthless or less civilized than they might otherwise be.

Contrast the U.S. The U.S. could and would take over Saudi Arabia in 24 hours were it not for its liberal values and the inhibiting dogma of national self-determination. This would put an end to countless Saudi-financed mosques in America and Europe which are seedbeds of global terrorism. Remember, 15 of the 19 terrorists that destroyed the World Trade Center were Saudis, and so are most of the terrorists in Guantanamo.

The West is in an intellectual strait-jacket. It can’t cope with Islam because it can’t think outside the box of liberal values. Liberal democrats think they are rational. Even if they were, they are dealing with an enemy that does not think in rational-humanistic terms. How to deal with Muslims who commit suicide to murder infidels is incomprehensible to Western rationalists who cannot muster the ruthlessness required to deal with such an enemy—the ruthlessness manifested in the bombing of Dresden and Hiroshima, without which ruthlessness the enemies of liberal democracy would never have been conquered.

To make sense of Islam’s suicide bombings, the liberal explains these bombings in Western terms: Muslims resort to these murderous acts because they are desperate, or because they lack the military capacity to confront the United States (or Israel) on the battlefield. However plausible this explanation may seem, it’s dangerously misleading.

When Arafat rejected Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer of 97 percent of Judea and Samaria, including eastern Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, he—Arafat—displayed the irrational mentality I am referring to (and of course Barak was also irrational). If Arafat’s mentality was comparable to that of the West he would gladly have accepted Barak’s offer. This applies to his ruthless, Janus-faced successors.

The mistake Israel’s ruling elites make is that they think in civilized and bourgeois terms, that some sort of quid pro quo can resolve Israel’s conflict with its Arab adversaries. Not at all, as 13 years of Oslo have proven.

Some sensible pundits admit that the Arabs are committed to Israel’s annihilation. But it’s important to add that this commitment is of the essence of an anti-civilized culture that uses monotheism to justify murder. The monotheistic veneer of Islam has deceived not only the West but more than a billion unfortunate Muslims. As Lee Harris would say, Islam is a “fantasy ideology” severed from reality—else the so-called Palestinians would have had a state in 1947, or in the year 2000 courtesy of Ehud Barak.

The fantasy is that Muslim mullahs and rulers believe they can restore the glories of original Islam—the Islam that conquered much of three continents in 100 years. Muslims may indeed destroy Western civilization, but they will perish soon thereafter for they lack the kind of mentality required to maintain the ingredients of civilization—certain values, moderation, work ethics, truthfulness, scientific innovation, which required thousands of years to evolve and perfect.

Wafa Sultan had the courage to suggest that Islam is not really a civilization. The word civilization connotes civility, which involves tolerance of diversity and the use of reason rather than force to settle disputes—all foreign to Islam. But who dares speak in these terms in this decadent and declining era of cultural relativism? Yes, but this cultural relativism is precisely what prevents the West from understanding and confronting Islam.

One last word—and here I address Jews everywhere: What is the meaning of Ahmadinejad’s lethal threat to the U.S. and Europe? He is saying, in effect: give us Israel and there will be no more 9/11s. You can be sure Islam will not stop with Israel.