Regarding the post below, War and Politics, I have been asked two questions: 1. What

about Muslims within Western cities, of whom there are millions, and, 2. Where to begin.

The tone of both was that perhaps nothing can be done against those Muslims living in

London or Paris, for example, or Los Angeles or Detroit. And, that, while it would be

nice to begin in Iran, terrorists are non-state actors.

 

The questions are excellent. But they assume an alternative to fighting this fanatical

tyranny. I am unaware of one not based in Western cultural mores -- e.g. assuming the

enemy has a goal which can be negotiated toward, met, and we can all get along. But that

is not a workable alternative. Using only Western assumptions to fight a civilizational

war will not work.

 

It seems at first glance that the query assumes, while not a silver bullet, a quick answer

and result. There isn't one.

 

While I agree that the enemy military forces – policy tools -- are non-state actors, the

enemy are the societies in which they prosper, and these societies are not non-state actors.

It is Iran that is equipping Hezbollah and Hamas. Saudi Arabia providing spiritual

guidance and money. Lebanon and Syria allowing transit to forces attacking democracy

and liberty.

 

Killing those states would necessarily lessen the violence against the West in the long

run. It would disrupt civilian support and financing, transport and travel. It likely also

would localize much of the violence temporarily, making more of the enemy easier to

destroy.

 

And it would show them we are deadly serious, something they know not to be the case

now.

 

Do we then have another Iraq guerrilla war, this time in Riyadh or Teheran? Recall my

statement about PGMs. Had we lacked PGMs and carpet-bombed Baghdad, we would be

much, much farther along toward our goal. War, not police action, is required. Three

years after Berlin and Hiroshima we were farther along than we now are in Baghdad, and

the weapons of war were the reason.

 

You also can’t have a guerrilla war in a city that has ceased to exist.

 

Where do we attack? Riyadh, Jeddah, Teheran first. If necessary perhaps Damascus,

Cairo. Perhaps even Jalalabad. These are the locus points of the enemy society. These

must be destroyed, both because that’s where the enemy is, and because not destroying

them would be like attacking Germany and Japan and not attacking Berlin and Tokyo - -

unserious and detrimental to the overall effort.

 

We were bombing Berlin and Tokyo long before we got to Germany or Japan with

ground forces. On our way to those capitals lots of other societies and peoples had to bear

the brunt of that fighting in their cities and towns because they had let the bad guys take

over - just as have the countries of Western Europe now. We very well may see urban

fighting, and perhaps on a large scale, in some Western cities.

 

Training in this war is done in Mosques and Madrassas – nearly all of which, as I

understand it, are funded by Saudis. All it takes to train a suicide bomber is to make

him/her a zealot - and then strap on a bomb. All it takes to blow a bunch of planes out of

the air is an OAG and a will -- and some liquid explosives. We're not talking about

D-Day-like logistics. Unless we keep waiting.

 

We also pretend that this war is "asymmetrical" in our favor and so treat it like a game

with statistics and general unseriousness – as though there is no question we will win;

that we need only set the parameters of the victory.

 

This is incorrect. Given the fact of inconvenience (terrorists will not leave this battlefield due to

the inconvenience of the fight - we will), it is asymmetrical in THEIR favor.

 

There is an excellent line in the book/movie “Gardens of Stone.” The veteran sergeant,

back from VietNam and now training new soldiers tells some recruits about VC attacking

a helo with bow and arrows. The recruits wonder how we can lose to people like that; the

sergeant looks at him and asks, “How can you beat people like that?” That, of course, is the

question of the age.

 

The logical first step in the West is to close all the mosques and madrassas and begin

deporting those who become violent about it. Can we suspend the First Amendment and

remain Americans? Lincoln dropped habeus corpus and saved America. FDR interned

100,000 Japanese-Americans. We have not ceased being Americans.

 

The biggest part of the problem is in treating Islam as a religion alone. It is not. It is a

competing form of government, a fanatically tyrannical one, one which also happens to

have a deity. Treating it solely as a religion in the Western sense is fundamentally

incorrect, and now is bordering on suicidal.

 

Limited warfare will not work: a modern society cannot drive barbarians from the

battlefield through inconvenience, period. (Limited war also is a Western concept

preached by multicultis who know no better, btw.)

 

At some point Teheran will have a bomb and blow up some Western city. At that point

this Republican president would blow up Teheran. (I really have no idea what a

Democrat or other Republican would do.)

 

In seriousness: why wait? It isn’t as though years and years of diplomacy have slowed

Iran’s nuclear quest. It isn’t as though they all will become Western Liberals once they

have the bomb. How many need to die because we won't act now?

 

Ahmadinejad already has told us what he’ll do with a bomb, just as did Hitler, in Mein

Kampf. Has he given us any reason to disbelieve him? Then why do we?

 

Waiting through the 1930s gave us 50M+ dead people. We had to go to war anyway. This

is the same – we’re in the ‘30s again, with a similarly ineffectual world body pretending

to knowledge. And a similarly elite Western civilization pretending there are alternatives

to war.

 

There aren’t.

 

As to Western cities, like London? Through inaction they have become the frog in the

pot. A frog tossed into a pot of boiling water, jumps out. A frog tossed into a pot of cold

water just placed on the stove swims around until it is cooked. Western society is

swimming in a pot that was cold until 1979 (thank you, Jimmy Carter), has been

heating up since, and now is coming to a boil. Are we going to realize it and jump out?

Or will our societies be the ones destroyed? Our military tool certainly cannot

be beaten, but our societies still can lose this war.

We never lost a single battle in VietNam, btw.

 

Like the frog, Western Europe probably has waited too long to jump out. Ask those living

in the suburbs of Paris or Amsterdam.

 

Given the enemy and its presence throughout the West, this war will result in hard

fighting, lots of deaths, and lots of disruption. Starting at the center, however, not only is

the only logical way to go, it is the only serious way to get started. You don't leave

in-place the capitals and monuments of the enemy as places of worship, symbols of purpose

or a boost of morale when you are trying to kill those societies. You destroy the

monuments. And you destroy the societies that erected them.

 

How demoralized would we be if an enemy began by destroying the monuments in DC?

Much more than if they left them for us to rally around - even if only symbolically.

 

One hopes and thinks that the destruction of Saudi Arabia and Iran (their governments

and cities, not their oil fields, which can be overtaken quickly by the huge numbers of

Western oil companies that would be ready, willing and able to do so under protection –

I am aware of the economic argument, as well), would presage the "coming out" of large

numbers of local terrorists in cities around the world, bringing them into the open to be

killed.

 

As in the 1930s, we have waited longer than we should have to deal with the situation –

but that does not mean it cannot, or must not be dealt with. It just will be more expensive

in blood and treasure than otherwise could have been the case with mature leadership,

civilizational confidence, and an educated franchise in the US.

 

I was asked this morning, "What do they want?" Very simple - they want what Islam

historically has wanted when it has encountered infidels - death or conversion. “Getting

along” is not on their agenda. They have no other goals – no treasure they desire, no land

they need, no resources they lack and want.

 

Just as Hitler wanted war and did everything he could to get it, Islamists want war - and

are waging it now.

 

And the longer we wait, the more expensive it will become. This fight isn’t going away.