Not terrorism, but a belief system

Not terrorism, but a belief system

A platoon leader in the Third Infanty Division who recently returned from six months in Iraq understands, even if his Commander in Chief does not, that the enemy is not “terrorism,” but something larger:

While patrolling the streets of Baghdad, I often got involved in political conversations with secular, educated, and “moderate” Iraqis about the war against Iraq, Israel, the Jews, and America. To my surprise, most of them held wildly irrational beliefs about the world. For example, most of them would swear that Ariel Sharon pressured a reluctant President Bush to go to war against Iraq [or] that the CIA put Saddam Hussein, a CIA agent, in power to allow U.S. forces to take Iraqi oil and impoverish Iraq. Finally, they were convinced that the CIA is an organization controlled by the Mossad and that powerful Zionists dominate Washington, D.C.! In fact, most Arabs in the world believe these absurdities. These beliefs are the product of years of intense brainwashing by their education[al] system, mass media and political and religious leaders. These beliefs turn educated, intelligent Arab family men into hijackers that slam passenger planes into buildings and homicide bombers that murder as may Jews as possible on Israeli buses.
We are not at war against terrorism; we are at war against an ideology. I consider this ideology to be the product of a dangerous mental disease. It is a disease that has infected millions of Arabs into believing that by destroying the enemy—the Jew, the State of Israel, and the “Great Satan” America—past Arab pride and glory [will] be restored. This mental illness is slowly but deliberately plunging the world into World War III.

Bush commanded by Sharon to invade Iraq? CIA controlled by the Mossad? Hey, it’s not just Arab nutcakes who believe this kind of thing, but the nutcakes on the antiwar right.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 31, 2003 01:59 PM | Send

Comments

“At war with an ideology” is surely better than a “war on terror,” but people still don’t seem to grasp the religious core of this thing.

Posted by: Paul Cella on November 1, 2003 8:07 AM

Agreed. And it’s too bad because soon after the 9/11 attack (I think in his speech of Sept. 20, 2001), President Bush described our enemies as a totalitarian movement. But then he seemed to drop that and just spoke of a “war on terror.”

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 1, 2003 8:18 AM

Terrorism is the technique…the ideology is the driving force.

Posted by: Arie Raymond on November 1, 2003 9:37 PM

Right. I heard it put this way once: Imagine if President Roosevelt, rather than declaring war on Japan on 12/08/41, had declared war on ‘suprise attacks.’ People counter by saying that there was an actual nation that we could declare war on. True, but that was not enough. The Shinto religious ideology had to subsequently be beaten down.

When we compelled Emperor Hirohito to renounce the divine basis of his political authority, that was a sound beginning. (I believe this prompted a few suicides across the country.) I wonder today if the PC crowd wouldn’t consider that unacceptably ‘insensitive.’

Posted by: Joel LeFevre on November 1, 2003 10:14 PM